Papua New Guinea

After a month there, PNG has become one of our favouritte places and we're already planning to return some day when we've saved enough! We spent this trip on the coast, where people live the same way as they have for many hundreds of years, growing, or catching their food, carving canoes from trees and keeping their cultures very much alive. There are over 800 different languages spoken in PNG. When we return, we'd like to visit the highlands, where the majority of the population lives.

Most people thought Dan was from PNG. Whereever we travel in the world, people think Dan's from there - maybe he should become an international spy?

It's hard work to travel round, as due to the mountains there's very few roads across the island and flying is expensive. We travelled mostly by boat, spending up to 3 days on one with no beds, and having to sleep on our bags or on the docks where we stopped at night. Many of the boats only come once a week, so if you happen to arrive in the departure town a day too late, you're there for the week. We travelled to closer places by canoe, or small boats with motors on, which was a lot of fun. People travel shorter distances by PMVs (Public Motor Vehicles), which can be buses or boats. There's no timetables for any of this, so the way you find out when and where they go is by asking people, until you find someone who knows. This can be very time-consuming and confusing, but gets you talking to the locals and provides you with a unique and charming way of sourcing your information.

Whereever we went in PNG, people would take responsibility for us, making sure we got the right boat, or found some accommodation. Sometimes people would stay with us for several hours until thay saw we were on the boat, or bus and they could then find someone aboard to take over the responsibility of us. People are also increadibly genorous. Another passenger on the boat offered to buy us food as he'd only seen us eating sugarcane and was worried about us. While another lady produced a pomello she'd grown in her garden and gave it to us.

The whole of PNG indulges in chewing betal nut and you'll see splodges of bright red everwhere that looks like copious amounts of blood, but is in fact the bright red spit that's produced. We tried the nut several times before we even got close to being able to understand how to chew properly (without making such an embaressing mess of ourselves - betal stains your skin unless you wash it off immediately). You have to first bite the husk to expose the nut (which looks a lot like the thing chopped off a cat during castration). You chew this in your cheek, which produces copious amounts of saliva, which can make you sick if you swallow, so you have to spit. Then you take a mustard stick, dip it into some powdered coral lime (much like a sherbert dibdab) and add this to your chewing. This doesn't lessen the amount of saliva produced, but does turn it bright red. The first few times we tried it we had red saliva down to our elbows, down our chins and all up our legs where we'd been spitting. We soon develloped a knack and were then able to chew in public a bit more respectably. People were fascinated by dimdims chewing their betal nut and really pleased, so pleased in fact that sellers would give us free betal to chew! The effect of the betal nut is that while chewing it will suddenly make you face go hot and then give you a head rush. We were told that you can get a bad nut that will make just your ear go hot!

When we arrived in PNG we spent a couple of nights in the capital - Port Morseby, then flew across the island to get to the coast and the most amazing snorkelling and diving. We spent a week living with a family of 17 people in a village called Garewa, just outside of Tufi. We were right on the beach, with a pristine reef at our disposal. We saw the most beautiful fish by the thousands as well as turtles and even a sea horse. Our accommodation was made entirely from natural resources from the forest and the food we ate was either grown, fished, or hunted by our hosts. We ate far too many bananas, as they're one of the staples - I never knew how many ways banana could be cooked - banana soup is one I won't be going back for!

The village had lost an uncle sometime ago and in a period of mourning they all stopped eating a certain food, Taro, for sometime. While we were staying with them, this period ended and they invited the other villages to come to celebrate with them. This involved a feast of Taro (and of course more bananas) and the men and dogs went out hunting for pigs with spears. They did catch a huge pig, but sadly, just as all the guests had left for the day! They boiled it in seawater and distributed it the next day.

From here we travelled further down the coast (only 2 nights on a boat/docks this time) to Alotau, a largish town in Milne Bay. I have never seen so much rain - it pissed it down all day and all night continuously. We never really dried out here, and even our waterproofs grew mould. A really friendly town though, where people greeted us with 'morning two' whereever we went. The local school was putting on a cultural show, which involved lots of traditional dress, swapping of live pigs tied to poles, dancing and of course betal nut chewing.

We spent a couple of nights on Samarai Island, a tiny island that you can walk round in 30 minutes. It used to be the second largest town in PNG, as it was a stopover in the China Strait. We stayed with a family here and discovered that the local word for travellers, or white people is 'dimdims'. It has to be my favouritte greeting yet, 'dimdim, look at the bird' as one young girl called to me. Our reason for coming to Samarai Island was that nearby is a Manta ray cleaning station, where the rays go to be cleaned by wrasses (one of only 2 known cleaning stations in the world). To get to the rays we had to hire a boat to travel to an even smaller island, where a really nice guy called Napoleon lived. Under his advice we watch the sea for a while, and as he said, when the current changed we saw them - just 2 as it's the wrong time of year. We grabbed our snorkels and ran into the sea and were lucky enough to get within about 2 meters of one of them - it was magical!

Back on Samarai Island there are remains of run down piers which they suggest you snorkel round. Not really thinking it looked that nice to swim round, but when in Rome and all... but Wow - there were literally more fish that water of all different shapes and sizes, from pipe fish to lion fish and huge shoals getting larger the deeper you went. It's known as muck diving as the water is full of tiny particles and not that clear in many places - I think that's what all those fish feed on.

From Samarai Island we returned to Alotau and spent a few more days there waiting for our weekly boat back up the coast (3 days, 2 nights this time). We spent a couple of nights in a village guesthouse in Oro bay, where the people were really lovely and cooked using traditional claypots for us to try. 'Uncle' (we never did learn his true name) would come and chew betal nut with us at night. We were the only English guests they'd ever had.

PNG has a reputation for being a lawless, dangerous country (which is fuelled largely by the Australian media) and it's true that there is a lot of tribal fighting between tribes in the Highlands. But from talking to people, that's just what it is, between tribes. We found PNG one of the safest Countries we've been to, as the people are so friendly and welcoming, that they invite you to join their community. The media really has done PNG a disservice in it's overempassis on troubles. This was put in perspective when talking to Uncle about driving to visit family, he asked whether it was safe to drive across the UK. I didn't understand what he meant at first, but he went on to explain that he'd read in the papers about terrorist attacks - the curse of the media!

We seemed to get along really well with the people we met along our travels, who seemed genuinely pleased that we were travelling with them on local methods of transport, rather than driving round in aircon 4x4's as most of the tourists do, chewing Betal and staying in villages. Most of the tourists to PNG come from Australia (very few from UK) and several people confided to us that they find Australians a bit arrogant at times, but that we Brits fit into the PNG way of life very well! We even have some new family (our Wantok) who adopted us at the airport.

I think I've written an essay here and I could go on and on about what a great time we had, the wonderful people we met, how special it is to be in a country so untouched by tourism, and what a priviledge and responsibilioty it is to be the first English people arriving in a village, but I'll end here, by telling everyone who reads this to go and experience PNG for yourself - there really is nowhere else like it!!!

We had a great last night in New Zealand, on Hot Water Beach. There's hot rocks under the sand which you can feel with your feet walking along certain parts - you're suddenly unable to stand there it's so hot. Then you dig a hole in the sand, which fills with the hot water and get in to wallow. It was just like family holidays in Cornwall, as the sea kept coming in, so we had to build a big dam to keep our hot pool warm. When the pool cools down a bit, just dig a bit more and instantly hot again. We even went into the freezing cold sea a few times, so we could then warm up in our hole afterwards.

We said goodbye to Trout, who'd served us well and arrived at Auckland airport with 14 hours until our flight. Checkin was 3am, so it wasn't worth getting a hotel room. Luckily they had a screen showing the olympics and free internet to keep us entertained. We even managed to get some sleep, until people started riding huge hoovers around the airport, then when that dyed down, a woman with a hoover strapped to her back and looking very much like an extra from ghostbusters came round and decided to concentrate on the area under our seats. The flight was 4 hours to Brisbain (which is the dullest airport we've been to) then 3 hours to PNG from here.

We'd phoned and booked a hotel in Port Moresby and our hotel came to collect us from the airport, which was very handy after not much sleep and a 26 hour journey with all the waiting at airports. Our hotel is all behind gates, as the areas round it are apparently a tad rough. My sister will understand what I mean when I say that it has an Indian feel here. People are curious by us and so stare a lot. Dan's been told he looks like he's from PNG, so I get most of the attention. The people are really friendly, somtimes overly so. We were shown into our room by no less 4 people. Some came just to have a good look at us.

We are only planning to stay in PM for a few days so we went to try and book a flight to the other side of the island. One of the ladies at the hotel told us that it was cheaper to try and catch a lift onboard a cargo chopper from the airport. I never expected that you could hitchhike with planes. As it turned out we had to take a normal flight. We tried all of the cargo companies and they all said it was possible, but not untill next week. No one thought it strange that we asking in the first place.

We can't wait to see the rest of this island. The diving and snorkling prommise to be incredable but we'll have to wait and see. Sue gets all the attention from the locals. I was told that I look like I'm from PNG so I can travel incognito when sue gets all the interest.

There is hardly any internet cafes in the whole of PNG so we won't be able to update untill the Phillipeans. It's only been two days in PNG and already strange aventures are calling. Bring on the rest of the island!