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 brochures 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 Britain and then fly to Papua and go hiking up in the highlands.

I’ve been many places where I really had 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 Kosrae 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 the internet while I’m in PNG (out of Port Moresby at least). I’m working under the assumption that I won’t, 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).

5 thoughts on “Planning New Guinea”

  1. hi,

    hope you must be back by now (from your vacation)… tell me how it was coz I’ve heard Guinea is an awesome place for vacation…

  2. Gary,
    Not that this helps you much now but for the last couple years the Discovery channel has had a series called living with: and it a series about two English guys that have lived for several months with two differnet tribes in PNG. One tribe was stone age, the other had some iron tools and pots, etc. They were both pretty remote. It looks beautiful, but hot and wet.

  3. Good luck, i hear it is awesome place, there are tonnes of places to explore over there….

    have a great trip…

  4. Agree with u that primitive comes to mind when PNG is mentioned..also cannibalism although I think a majority of its people have stopped this.

    I believe you’ll have a great time exploring PNG.

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