Wednesday & Thursday. August 15-16, 2012. We piled into the hotel van to go to the airport terminal, which we knew was close… but hadn’t realized it was right in town only three blocks away! We checked in for our flight, and sat down to wait. But of course, Air Niugini was about to strike […]
Tuesday. August 14, 2012. We were scheduled to drive east from Mount Hagen to Garoka on the Highlands “Highway,” which at its best is a two lane road that twists and turns, rises and drops, the length and breadth of the highlands, climbing from the coast and challenging the inhospitable mountain territory of the Eastern, […]
Monday. August 13, 2012. The next morning, I asked our driver to stop at the “mud-market” that we had passed each of the previous three days so I could take some photos. The marketplace was a smelly, constantly muddy field alongside the road on the outskirts of town. For three days, we had seen the […]
Friday – Sunday. August 10-12, 2012. We rose at 4am to catch our 6am flight to Port Moresby and connected (without delay!) to our flight to Mt. Hagen. We were met at the Hagan airport by Pym Mamindi, owner of Paiya Tours, the organizer we chose for our highlands tour. The baggage claim experience was […]
Thursday. August 9, 2012. We got an early start on the river, just as students at the Mission primary school were arriving by foot and canoe for classes. We headed downriver to Pagwi, where we were met by our van and driver for the return trip to Wewak. Oh, did I mention that long stretches […]
Wednesday. August 8, 2012. In the pre-dawn light we slipped and slid our way down the muddy incline to our canoe. We motored a mile or two down the shore to a location in the dense rain forest where birds of paradise were known to gather high in the canopy. Hacking our way along overgrown […]
Tuesday. August 7, 2012. Before breakfast the next morning, Pomat and Steven went for another bath in the pre-dawn light. The rest of us were too lazy, even if we were already sweaty and could have used the cleansing. Breakfast included pancakes made from tasteless Sago palm flour which had been mixed with fresh bananas […]
Friday and Saturday. August 3 and 4, 2012. 7:00am. Exactly 24 hours after arriving in Brisbane from Los Angeles, we were back at the airport. We’d been advised to check in three hours before our 10am Air Niugini flight to Port Moresby, capital of Papua New Guinea, which might seem to have been a strange […]
“Why Papua New Guinea?” It’s usually the first question anyone asks when they learn we went there for our family vacation ─ the very first question, even before, “Where is it?” or, “What was it like?” So… why Papua New Guinea? Because I wanted to visit a land where two generations ago, a large fraction […]
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