Adventures galore. Highlights were snorkeling the reefs, camping on Swallow's Rest (an island 20 meters by 5 metres), early morning fishing, 3 day bike ride through heart wrenchingly beautiful New Ireland, swimming in the ocean with 200 odd dolphins, climbing an active volcano, drunken golf.
Details are boring. Instead, let me tell you about a different PNG. Housemate and I agreed that if we had gone home without doing this trip we would have passed quite a different verdict on PNG. The people in the eastern provinces were mentally easy going, physically hard working, extremely hospitable and gregarious. Kids and grown-up alike welcomed us with hi fives. Flower and fruits were handed out as we rode past. The couple of times we stopped at a village for lunch, they cooked for us and gave us fruits and shared their little available drinking water (hadn't rained in a long time and rain water storages were low). Kokopo and Rabaul also function much more efficiently than Goroka. There were wide roads in good conditions, a clean and well organised vegetable market and the people had this precocious sense of cleanliness that had all us Gorokans agog. Just as I was beginning to generalise PNG as a failed state, I am forced to reconsider and have hope that things can be different.
Then again, I might have a different opinion if I lived there.
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