Back in Aussie

I’m back safe and sound from Papua New Guinea. I have a lot of stuff to write and I’ll try to get some of it up over the next few days. I’m in Cairns for two days before I fly to Darwin and start the drive to Perth. That is going to make going from Sydney to Cairns look like a trip around the block.

Oddly enough, I met a lot of Americans in PNG. I almost never meet Americans while traveling and I hadn’t expected to meet any in PNG of all places.

I probably had more conversations with people in PNG than I did my entire time in Australia. You don’t get the average 18-22 year old gap year European who is out to get drunk in Papua New Guinea.

Alive in PNG

I can’t believe they have internet here. It isn’t great, but I can do simple things.

So far, my PNG experience has been amazing. The Port Moresby airport is far, far from the worst airport in the world. (which I saw it was on one list).

I’m on Kimbe Bay on New Britian Island. The people here are great. The food is great. The diving is great. The other guests I’ve met are great. I did 3 dives today and got massively sunburned. Skin cancer is probably the biggest danger here. This is one of the better places I’ve stayed on my trip. So far, it has been 100% positive.

Kimbe Bay is totally ringed with small volcanoes, most of which are in some stage of activity. I guess plane flights for the few days before I arrived were canceled because of volcanic ash in the air.

The universal consensus is that Port Moresby sucks, but there is no reason to ever go there. There is nothing to see. Port Moresby is not PNG. That is like saying Iowa is dangerous because Detroit is.

PNG, Here I Come

My tickets are booked and everything is ready to go for my excursion to PNG (Papua New Guinea). Researching this trip has been very different than any of the other places I’ve researched so far.

There are parts of PNG which are for all practical purposes no different than they were 1,000 years ago. This places it in a different category from any place I’ve been to date. PNG is one of the most rural countries in the world with 85% of the population living outside of cities. Most of that 15% is in Port Moresby.

In researching what to do and where to go online, I’ve found a real dearth of information compared to what I’m used to, especially for the highland areas. There are plenty of resorts around the coastal areas, but most of the highland information I’ve found consists of “hire a guide” and the prices are really expensive. In fact, getting prices for a single night in the Port Moresby area seems more expensive than Sydney or Tokyo.

I’ve often found the best advice comes from people on the ground who have been to the places you’re going. Once you get in a region, you discover more information about a place. The universal message I’ve gotten from everyone I have spoken to, including people from PNG, is to be very very careful, especially in Port Moresby and other towns. My “travelers sense” tells me that PNG might be the most dangerous place I’ve visited so far.

The danger is mostly just street crime. I have yet to read anything about political violence or widespread violent movement beyond some inter village skirmishes. As I understand it, there are roving bands of young men who have no compulsion to prey on outsiders. The most common adjective I’ve seen for hotels in the Port Moresby area was “secure”. The advice I was given was to get to your hotel, then stay put.

It is hard to make decisions about a place before you get there. Most of the rumors and stories you hear usually aren’t true. Then again, some places just are dangerous. While I am willing to take reasonable risks, there are some risks which are just stupid. I am often asked if I plan on visiting Iraq or Afghanistan. The answer is “no, not anytime soon”. I would be happy to visit Iran, North Korea or Cuba, but would not want to visit out of control places like Somalia.

The closest thing I have to compare to PNG has been the Solomon Islands. One woman I spoke to said that Honiara was 5x safer than Port Moresby, and while I never felt in any danger in the Solomons, Honiara is a far cry from Tokyo and was the location of a lot of violence several years ago.

So we’ll see how it goes. I’m sure I’ll get comments from people who have been to PNG who will say “it’s fine” and others who will say “be careful”. I’ll err on the side of caution. My current plans are pared down a bit from my original ones, but I hope it will still be a pretty good experience.

Planning New Guinea

I’m getting ready to go to Papua New Guinea (PNG). My original plan was to fly to Port Moresby back in July when I was in the Solomon Islands. However the flight schedule from Honiara was too unpredictable. There was only one flight a week and it was expensive and really didn’t fit into the flow of where I was going in that part of the Pacific at the time.

PNG is only about 500 miles away from Cairns. Walking around Cairns I can find brocures for attractions in Sydney, Tasmania, Perth, Darwin, Fiji, New Zealand and Vanuatu. I can’t find a thing about PNG even though it is much close than any of those places. I had to go to the office for Airlines PNG to get any information.

I’ve been in Australia quite a while now and I’m getting antsy to go someplace that isn’t so…..Australia. I think PNG will deliver that in spades.

My current plan is to spend two weeks in PNG. I’ll go diving on New Britian and then fly to Papua and go hiking up in the highlands.

I’ve been many places where I really no no preconceived idea of what to expect because they are so small and unknown that they don’t have real impact in the media (Marshall Islands anyone?) PNG is sort of like that. I know a bit of the history of the country and structure of the country, but the basically the only real image I have of the place in my mind is that of a “primitive” country. Most of the people still live in villages and live like they did for hundreds of years.

I have no idea if that is actually true, but that is the image I have from what little I’ve heard of the country. What little exposure I’ve had to the country since I’ve started my trip has surprised me:

• One thing you should always check is where a can or bottle of Coke is bottled. Usually is it whatever the nearby major metropolitan area is. In the Pacific, I saw Auckland, Suva, Singapore and Port Moresby as cities where they had bottling plants. The Port Moresby one I didn’t expect.
• I was talking to the owners of the resort I stayed at in Kosrea in Micronesia. I told them of where I was planning on going in the future and one of the places was PNG. She mentioned that they had gone to a tourism in the Pacific conference and the group which was the most organized and professional was the group from PNG.

I’m not sure what I’ll find.

I also have no clue if I’ll have internet while I’m in PNG (out of Port Moresby at least). I’m working under the assumption that I wont, so be prepared for a whole lot of daily photos for the time I’m away.

If you are a traveler and would like to do a guest post while I’m up in the highlands, send me an email. (I’m only interested in stories about places you’ve been or things you’ve done. Photos and video are big pluses).