After I could get such a lot of useful informations from this forum I want to give some informations back and write my first article in the thorn tree. Sorry for some grammatical mistakes and wrong uses of words – my mother language is German.
First: PNG is a wonderful country with wonderful landscape and the most wonderful people. It is expensive and cheap just depends on what you will do. We (my wife and me) had never the feeling that there could be any danger but we must say that the most time we spent in company with locals or guides.
Prices:
The most prices in the Lonely planet are not correct anymore. For example: The recommended COMFORT INN in Port Moresby costs now 305 Kina for the budget room including breakfast without bathroom, not 176-220. That is ridiculous expensive in compare with other Asian countries but that is PNG. In the most cases add around 10-20% more than it is written in the LP.
On the other hand: The recommended Auong guest house on Muschu island opposite of Wewak is still 30 Kina per person plus meals. The meals were a little bit disappointing, the breakfasts were really small but the five days there we really enjoyed. Just make the price for the trip to Kairiru with walking up to the craterlake on the top (2.5h up) clear before: Around 300 Kina for boat and skipper and tip for the guide (petrol is expensive!). Three days later they wanted to have 200 Kinas more for guiding sefvice (??) what was a little bit unfair. By the way: we didn’t pay.
Guest houses on the country side (coast) can be really cheap and good, guest houses in towns can be really cheap and horrible!
Mount Hagen:
The best place to stay maybe in the whole highlands is the MAGIC MOUNTAIN LODGE of Pym and Elisabeth Memindi (mobil: 76858183) in the village Paiyakona. A wonderful couple with a great humour and helpful in every way. The lodge is around 30minutes from Mount Hagen on the way to Enga in a wonderful surrounding with gardens and villages. You can climb up Mount Hagen – around 4h up but then you are still not at the main summit what will take another hour but there you already have fantastic views. You can make village walks, a trek to a waterfall through really thick jungle and other walks. And the food is marvellous. Price: 170Kina for the cottage plus meals. When you call Pym, he will pick you up and bring you to the lodge.
Also the Paiya show organized by him is great: A small singsing one day before the big Mount Hagen singsing with around ten groups and a kind of traditional show with wedding and tribal fight. Maybe next year there will be even more. You are really near at the groups when they put on the makeups. You can watch how they prepare a mumu (earth oven with hot stones). Great thing, Pym!
By the way: We had three mumus with pig on our trip and we ate it. We ate everything, lung, lever, heart, kidneys, fat and filet. It is delicious!
Mount Hagen singsing:
It is the 300 Kina entrance worth! It’s a lot of money but there are also a lot of groups. Don’t expect a trip to the stoneage. It is a touristic folklore festival. But it is absolutely amazing. I know what I am speaking about – I am from Munich and we have now the Oktoberfest with “folkore show”. That one in Mount Hagen is real!! This year there were not the expected hundreds of tourist. On the first day there were maybe 150, at the second day around 50!
Enga and Wewak:
The Singsing in Wewak one week before Mount Hagen is also worth to see. Different groups and the stars of the whole highlands – The Sili Muli Group from Enga – are dancing and singing for hours not just for an hour like in Mount Hagen. This time there were maybe 20 to 30 tourists but thousands of local people and australian rugby game at the end.
Staying is possible at the Wildlife guest house: It’s okay but be prepared for cockroaches. The owner is Peter Wakal, a wonderful man with whom you can make great talks.
He organised for us a 6-day-trekking trip to Maramuni – and that was one of the best things we ever did. It is a very remote area with horrible steep mountains but wonderful people and villages where nothing changed in the last hundreds of years except the names of the people. Now their names are Tony, Margareth and Otto. If You come to Kayamatok wonderful situated on a ridge opposite of Pasalagus (usually every Monday a MAF flight to Mount Hagen 330 Kina) please tell them our greetings.
By the way: The very old lonely planet edition “bushwalking in PNG” is a kind of dangerous. A route is described there with around 6.5h (Lambusalam to Wailep on the Maramuni trek). All the people told us it is not possible to do it in one day with luggage. It is dangerous because there is nothing but jungle between the two places. We couldn’t do it because of tribal conflicts.
Never expect real timings in PNG: When they say it takes 2.5 to 3h to the top of Mount Hagen it will take 4-5h. If they say it takes 6h to somewhere expect 8-9h. When they say there are a lot of PMVs from Mount Hagen to Madang expect one which is ful after 1 or 2 hours. The wrongest time we got at the Sepik:
Sepik:
A great way to reach the Sepik is following: Go to Madang and further along the coast to Bogia. Stay there at the Anua Negu Lodge with very nice rooms (budget 80-100, standard with own bathroom 150-180 just a stonethrow away from the waves) and meet Michael from the neighbour village, a great old man who can tell stories about everything. Just opposite is the impressive and still very active volcano Manam.
From there take a PMV around 10km further to Mendi (I hope I remember correct), not necessary to go to Watam! Here there are boats coming and going to Angoram, the biggest village on the lower Sepik. It is not a regular boat service but nearly every day there are boats which bring betelnuts from Sepik downstream. It takes around 5h on the motor boats (not 2h like someone said!!!) and costs 100Kina per person. 2h are on the open sea then you reach the mouth of the Sepik. If you are lucky they will use a shortcut for around 30min through a small canal in the middle of the jungle. Fantastic!!
Angoram is nearly a town without electricity and no traditional houses. But the oneday trip on the Keram river upstream to Kambot is wonderful. If the petrol is not running out! We reached Angoram at 10 o’clock at night. It was great to hear the jungle from the boat without motornoise. The most dangerous situation on the whole trip was the walk back to our friend's house at night time.
There are nearly no boats going upstream from Angoram where you could jump on. The petrol on the Sepik is horrible expensive so it makes it a little bit difficult to reach the Middle Sepik. If you are a group or you have enough money you can rent a boat. Or go by PMV to Wewak (usually leaving Angoram around 1-2pm, around 4h), stay there and continue to Pagwi. The road to Timbunke must be in such a horrible condition that we heard that a priest from Timbunke went from Wewak to Angoram and took the boat to Timbunke. He didn’t travel by road directly to Timbunke!!!
That’s for the moment.
Conclusion:
Many things in PNG are going down. The most roads are in much worse condition than ten or twenty years back as the people said. Many towns and villages which had electricity 15 years back don’t get petrol for the generators anymore. Schools are closed, hospitals are not anymore in use. Nearly everybody was complaining against the politicians. There were clan fights in Bulolo between Sepiks and Highlanders just right now, cholera in some areas and many people told about the high criminality. BUT: PNG is one of the most fascinating countries in many ways: It’s a trip to different countries when you go to the highlands, the Sepik or the coastal area including islands. The cultures are in many ways completely unspoilt and I haven’t seen so many traditional houses like in PNG. Forget the towns, go to the country side!!
We will come back although it is a really long and expensive way from Germany. I never met such wonderful people although I am tourguide for India (my favourite country for travelling), Nepal and Mongolia and spent more than 30times nearly everywhere in India including walking 1700km – the PNG people are the most fantastic.
Thanks a lot to all of them and see you again!!
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