"I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move." RLS
For me, the Ile des Pins was a stop on a short South Pacific cruise. A number of operators offer cruises from Australia which stop at the Ile des Pins and this is the way the majority of international visitors get to and from the island. That said, the island is also a popular weekend retreat for Noumeans, Noumea, the capital of New Caledonia, being a short flight or boat ride from the Ile des Pins. Continue reading “Getting to the Ile des Pins and Getting Around”
Paraphrasing Henry Neville’s 1668 book, ‘The Isle of Pines’, swinging sex, free love and unadulterated naughtiness was rife on an island in the South Pacific around 400 hundred years before the first two of these terms were coined by Californian hippies in the 1960s. And, perhaps even more amazingly, it was the famously inhibited and prudish English that brought these things to the Isle of Pines. I invented the third term. Continue reading “No Hurries, No Worries”
Having secured a job in Port Moresby it was then necessary to get there. Knowing that the last couple of weeks in Belfast were scheduled with “the client from hell” I decided that a few days stopover en-route to PNG were necessary. In any case then, as now, there were no direct flights from Belfast to PNG (I wonder why?) so I had to change planes somewhere! Continue reading “Getting to PNG”
Two friends were visiting me from the UK so I decided to take them to Lake Kutubu, well up into the Highlands of PNG. Our first transit stop was Mt Hagen airport into which we flew on a small MAF (Mission Aviation Fellowship) single engine plane (picture below). I personally didn’t like flying on single engine planes and would only do it where there was no other options. Continue reading “Making the vote count in Mt Hagen”
Do bear with me for what might appear to be a digression before I tell you about elections in Papua New Guinea. I call it context. Continue reading “Believe the Ambassador”
Goroka is famous for its “Eastern Highlands Cultural Show”, better known as the “Goroka Show”. It is held every year on the weekend closest to Papua New Guinea Independence Day (16th September). Continue reading “Not A Night Out At The Ballet – Goroka Show”
Goroka Market, with ready access to produce from the fertile Highlands and Markham Valley is one of, if not the best market in PNG for fresh fruit and vegetables. It is certainly one of its most colourful markets. Continue reading “Goroka Market”
During my time in Port Moresby I moved apartments, from a downtown apartment to a new one in the suburb of Boroko.
This move necessitated getting the telephone connected. Continue reading “Get a phone connected”
In a separate review on the Aseki smoked bodies I related the rather gruesome ‘burial’ rituals of the Anga tribe in Aseki, Morobe Province. Another earlier approach, within PNG, to ‘honouring the dead’ was endocannibalism, or eating them! Continue reading “Coffin bilong dai man”
Time for short language lesson.
Papua New Guinea has a population of less than eight million (2015), double what it was in 1989 when I lived there, yet there are over 700 different languages in use. Given this, it is not surprising that a lingua franca has developed. Continue reading “Tok Tok Pisin (Speak Tok Pisin)”
The Rambling Wombat 