traveling in august 2009 fesitivals

hello ,

we have plans to visit papau new guinea buth who has experience in the month august with the fesitivals, how you arrange accomodation , and what can we expect. who can give us info of good tour operator who can bring us to the local village of papua new guinea

peter and miram

the netherlands

The Goroka show is fantastic. The bird of paradise is the main place to stay in town. You should book in advance. They should be able to assit with a tour guide.

Otherwise, Bob bates is a great guy and runs a tour company that travels all over teh country. He has some fantastic lodgers. One called Karawari lodge (i think) - that was the highlight of my trip.

Good luck!

This is Bob Bates' company. Highly recommended http://pngtours.com/index2.html

Yeah, I can vouch for Trans Niugini Tours, expensive but great.

Hi,

Last year in August my partner and I were to 3 festivals: Enga Festival, Mount Hagen Festival and Payia Festival. The Paiya Festival is organized a day before Mount Hagen Festival.

All of them were absolutely great even though the costumes and the sing sing groups are the same. I think that the best opportunity for good pictures was during the Paiya Festival, which is held in a small village (Paiya) and with a limited number of tourists. The area is magnificent and you can observe the entire preparation to the festival: people painting their faces, preparing themselves, preparing food.

I also liked the Enga Festival because there were very few tourists and we were able to circulate without any restrictions.

The Mount Hagen Festival is a huge event, with hundreds of tourists and over 80 sing sing groups. But the event is really grandiose and the festival area very nice: huge green fields.

For Mount Hagen and Paiya Festivals I contacted Pym Mamindi from Paiya Tours : paiyatours@datec.net.pg
He also booked a hotel room for us during the Mount Hagen festival. He was very helpful and he kept all his promises. It was a fabulous experience!

Emilia