Advertisement
Published: September 11th 2009
Edit Blog Post
Hello all!
From now on we will start writing our blog in English as we are meeting a lot of fellow travellers from all around the world that want to follow our blog….Perhaps this can be a good occasion for the mums to practise their English???
For those same worried mums, don’t worry: we have survived Papua and are still alive and kicking. We have just arrived in Darwin, Australia and will be picking up our campervan tomorrow morning. And then these boys are on the road again for another three weeks touring in Australia!
Papua seemed more like Africa then Asia: the people were very dark black skinned and have the same frizzled hair as black people do. I guess there must be a migration history of some kind between Papua and Africa or perhaps with the also darkly skinned aboriginals, but I don’t know the details…..Other similarity: sorry to say so, but Papuans are also quite poor. When you visit smaller villages in the center of Papua you can even see children with swollen bellies and people are often just wearing rags instead of decent clothes. Not a very pleasant sight to see and at times
a bit shocking. But nonetheless, the Papuan people are extremely welcoming. Say a few words in their language, give some candy to the children or hand out some cigarettes to the elders and soon a magical big smile will appear.
Other things we will never forget about Papua:
* The smell of Papua. Yes, Papua has a very particular smell to it, a bit like sweat but then Papuan style. People have very low hygienic standards in Papua and they don’t wash themselves very often. The Papuan smell seems to have found its way to our bags and if we open them and smell deep, we can still smell Papua. Aaaaah Papua!
* Our hotel, with no running water and infested with rats and cockroaches. Every night there was a whole rat family gathering in our room when the lights went out. You could hear the rats in the night, scrambling around in our room, under your bed or on the bedside table next to your head, squeeking and eating our crisps. There were loads of them and we didn’t get much sleep during the night as we were always woken up by a new family gathering.
Even when we threw away all our food, they still kept coming in search of food every night! Apart from that, there was no running water in the hotel, unless you begged the owner to put the water on for a few minutes so you could wash yourself. But hey, backpackers as we are, we slept in the cheapest hotel in town, so who’s to blame?:-)
* The prices. Big surprise when we arrived in central Papua: at bottle of water costs 5 times as much in the center then outside! Even the most basic hotel is at least double priced, as is with all the rest of the food. But then again, the explanation is quite logic: as there are no roads, everything has to be flown in by airplane and yes….prices do tend to be reasonably high for that reason….
Our story then:
We firstly arrived in Papua deadly tired from our trip Sulawesi-Papua .We had first taken a night bus in Sulawesi and (off course)hadn’t slept much at all, after which we still had to catch the plane to Papua. The sun was really beating down on us when we landed in Papua and
while we were melting away in the hot sun, desperately looking for a hotel to crash for the night (everything was full, too dirty or too pricy) , we really hit rock bottom (or as we say in Antwerp: “oens keirs was echt wel ut”). At that time we really thought: my god, what have we done? Was coming to Papua such a good idea? But all ends, well ends and I guess once in a while you need a good down, to get another up.
After arriving to Papua we immediately took an inner flight from Jayapura (the so-called “capital”, well yes at least KFC had already discovered there was a capital city at all, jipijaje for KFC!) to Wamena in the Baliem valley, right in the center of Papua. There we stayed for about one week, exploring the surroundings.
The next downer we had in Papua was when we landed in this valley, as it started raining really hard. It was 1 september and our guidebook soon taught us that the rainy season in Papua starts on………errrrr……1 september! Mother Nature can be very strict in these things you know….. But luckily for us, Mother Nature came
to her senses after one rainy day and a prayer or two from our side. It still continued raining the following week, but only during night time, so we were mostly spared, although the dirt roads in the Baliem valley did get muddy at some times. The day we left Papua it started raining really hard again, so I guess we got very lucky with the weather…..
Why was sunshine so important for us? Well, the best way to explore the Baliem valley is: on foot, with a trekking of several days. Nope, no highways out there. Except from a few asphalted roads, there is nothing but only small footpaths leading to different tribes and villages in the valley hills. If you go on such a trekking you really need a guide and some porters to carry your stuff (food, water, sleeping bag, cooking gear, etc…). We tried to book a trekking from Belgium beforehand, but the prices tour operators ask are really staggering. We have come across prices ranging from 2000 to 3000 euro p.p. for just 5 days in the Baliem valley. Crazy!
So, we decided to just fly to the Baliem Valley, try to find
a guide and porters there and arrange a trekking expedition on our own. We were a bit nervous about this , but for the future Papuan visitors: don’t worry! You can easily find local guides in the valley yourself! Just be sure to pick one you can thrust, so ask references, to the police or fellow travelers you meet up there (if you meet any fellow travelers at all, because we only saw a few….not much tourism going on over there and we were there in high season!). We picked a guide that worked together with a hotel and had his own website with references from past travelers, his name: Penius. As there are not many tourists in town, word spreads fast that a few newbies have arrived, so the guides will always track you down and come to you to propose a trekking…The best place to find guides: the airport area.
Well, back to us then. In the end we were able to organize our own little expedition of four days with 1 guide, 3 porters and a cook. The trekking was really nice and, as already mentioned, we were very lucky with the good weather conditions. Our
food was cooked above a wooden fire and we slept in huts of local villagers during our trekking. At a certain moment Bart looked like a doctor with his elaborate medical kit, nursing some people who had open wounds…
The rest of our time in the Baliem valley we filled in with some day trips without a local guide, just taking local transport and walking around a bit from village to village. We saw a traditional “welcome dance” and a “mock fighting ceremony” during one of these trips, which was quite nice. In one village they also had a 250 year old mummy of a former chieftain which they proudly showed us. We also visited a natural salt spring. Locals wash banana stems in the salt spring and then let them dry to produce salt. We helped by washing some leaves for them:-)
The last day, we explored the Sentani lake by speedboat and we treated ourselves with a decent haircut, barber shave and extensive massage!
Well, that was Papua. Proud that we made it, but glad to now have landed in Australia!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.131s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 17; qc: 70; dbt: 0.0644s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb
vincent
non-member comment
nice!
Ik word iets jaloerser per "post" die jullie doen. Enjoy!