Release date 6/7/2011

I went along with Kate to a place on the PNG mainland near the city of Lae called Kamiali a wildlife management area. She had to meet a researcher who was working there, and we had heard so many terrible things about Lae I wanted to see it for myself what all the hubbub, or was the ewwweee?, was about.

It didn’t quite live up to our expectations because we didn’t see any actual crime or dead bodies, but there was definitely an “edge” to the place. Maybe the most noticeable was when we walked around in town by ourselves outside the hotel gates or armored van and people starred at us like we were in a remote village where they don’t get any white people. The crafts for sale on the street were very inexpensive, and I had to keep my eye on Kate around the deeply discounted puppies.

We were met by the airport car service, Guard Dog Security. These guys are a real hoot. They have capitalized on the crime hype. Everybody is so terrified they pay 96Kina for a ride from the airport instead of 20Kina on a PMV. They wear military fatigues and were supposed to be armed, but they weren’t. We gave the guys some biscuits, and if they had guns, I bet they would have let us shoot them if bought them more bullets. They did drive really really fast, and the windows were covered in a wire mesh.

I absolutely love their logo, it is a little head of doggie, in the yellow shield. Look closely you have seen this before….

That’s right it is a direct takeoff of the US 101st Airborne logo, Air Cavalry, like in Apocalypse Now, but they have substituted the horse for a dog. We also like it because the dog looks like Stinky! We suspect he is not sharing his royalties with us.

 

We departed and left from the lovely Eye Grease Market for the ride out there. As in my last post "Eye Grease" is supposed to mean beautiful, it wasn’t. It was muddy, scary, and filthy.

 

The boat ride out and back was really long, over 2 hours, it would have been a lot longer but the boats have tiller steered 75HP engines on them, so they move pretty quickly. The drivers have huge overdeveloped left arms. There aren’t a lot of people living along this coast, and the scenery was amazing. I was huddled under a tarp, and didn’t take any pictures because of the rain.

The lodge was ok, a bit rundown, but after a few years in PNG it doesn’t seem so bad. It must have been really nice at one point; unfortunately it has been decaying ever since it was first built. It is now only used by visiting researchers, but was supposed to be  a tourist lodge, that never happened.

Seems like it was built by some silly Canadian CUSA volunteers as a development project, but they didn’t set-up any business model to lure tourists. It is such a hell boat ride from a hell city that no tourist in his right mind would come here anyway. The diving isn’t great because some muddy rivers enter into the sea in the village. They should have spent the money putting in a float plane facility.

The locals use a lot of sailing canoes in this area, and all of the sails are made of traditional mats which is really unique. In Alaotau we only saw one traditional sail out of hundreds.

 

There was a lot of activity in the village because a big-wig had died so they were getting ready for his mat-mat funeral. We bumped into group after group of women and girls on the beach hauling wood for the BBQ, the men were probably all out fishing, and carrying wood is wok blong meri anyway...

In one village on an island we found this giant pile of coral. 

They are harvesting and drying it to make the lime for Beetlenut. This pile is basically one full boat load of coral. It sits out in the rain and sun and gets a bit bleached, then they process it. It was hard to get anybody to describe the processing of it, or the amount of money they could make because they seem to know the white people don’t approve of killing and grinding-up coral, but kate did get a video of a guy describing the entire process.

The people in this area don’t chew coral lime, they only chew with lime made of shell. The coral lime is supposed to be very “hot” or strongpela, and they sell it to people in the highlands.

To make it into powder they burn it in a bamboo fire. Then rinse it, then cook it again in a pot, and it breaks down into a very very fine dust.

The 2 videos at the bottom show a lady rinsing it, then cooking it the final time. Its hard to see in the video but it basically just cooks to dust. The weird thing is that the shells look really dirty, and they don’t clean them very well, but when it finally breaks down in the last stage it turns pure white. Its almost like magic, the black stuff just disappears.

This was the coolest house ever. The corner closest to the front shows the vines going into the ground, then they have trimmed it like a giant topiary. We couldn’t get a straight answer from the guy how long it had been growing, but we suspect he has rebuilt the house underneath it once or twice. This traditional houses only last 5 or 10 years.

 

Not sure  if it will  come out, but I made this map to show Kate’s replacement where the house is. Maybe download and blow-up the picture if you’re really curious.

Here are two pictures from Kavieng that snuck in this post. This is a pile of clams I got at the market, it comes in a basket woven out of a palm frond. 6 Kina, about $2.50.

This sunset picture is from a kayak trip I did a few weeks ago.

I had a pretty bad bike wreck and hurt my shoulder this week, so no kayaking for a while. I was riding to work in the dark really early in the morning and I went down trying to get around a mud puddle. I am still worried about it, but after 4 days it seems to be getting better, and hurts less than it did before. I still can’t easily lift my arm over my head, and certainly couldn’t carry my boat to the water, much less paddle it…

This picture was from my phone, and it didn’t really come out, but it is pretty funny. There are two articles about Bouganville, a semi autonomous part of PNG that is half in and half out of the country after they had a little war in the 1990s.   The area is very poor, and just generally a mess after the insurrection.

The top article talks about how they local government is meeting with a Chinese government to get an investment to rebuild the main city into a “model” city, sort of like that place in the Truman show. The Chinese will invest 1.5 Billion Kina and build the city something like that.

The other article on the same page talks about a protest they recently had in the same city where the local people wanted to get rid of the all the Chinese merchants running the trade and food stores, and how several of the stores had been destroyed or looted. The people had signs saying “Kong-Kong Get Out”.

Both articles carried quotes from Government officials, but not the same official. The one government official for the racists protest was basically acknowledging that the government was looking into steps to “preserve local business enterprises” basically supporting the racist looters.

What isn’t said, but the subtext is, that this island contains one of the richest copper mines in the entire world, that’s what the war was about. So the Chinese government might give them their Truman show city, if they can get a real good deal on all the copper.

I made a truth on the Lae, but can’t remember it…

Paddle Date 5/30/2011

Ive been having trouble finding empty bottles, and been kind of lazy so I haven't release many bottles, and only done a little bit of kayaking.

This picture of these little kids was taken on 5/22/2011 while Kate was out of town. I kayaked over to Nusa and then went out in a friend's motor boat to go snorkeling. I got cooked by the sun, so I was glad it was just a short paddle home. I actually paddled to my office, probably the only time I will ever do that, to pick up the power cord for my laptop.

This picture of Stinky and Maity is during an incredibly low tide out front of our house. The dogs and I could walk right out to the edge of the reef.

I have been paddling a few times since then, and I have to carry my kayak down to the West to a small cut just to get in the water where I can paddle.

I had the most amazing email today from a woman who found the January 2nd, 2006 bottle out in the Hamptons. Check it out:

January 2006 blog entry.

This weekend Kate and I are going on a romantic get-a-way....

We fly to Lae, a city renowned for crime, dirt, disease, and industry. It has rascals, cholera, and a lot of containerized shipping. I think its the worst spot in Papua New Guinea, so its good to check that off our list.

We call a security service called "Guard Dog Security". The Guard Dog dudes give us a ride to town. The ride itself should be worth the 100Kina each we have to pay. Because of the crime it is in an armored car, and the drivers are armed. They drive really really fast because according to the guide book: "Its difficult to hold-up a car when it is traveling at 150 KMH."

We go to a place called "The Eye Grease Market".

If we get there at Tea time we can have light lunch there of cucumber sandwiches, otherwise it is a smoked fish on a dirty leaf, or a leftover cookie from the Executive Club at the Rabaul Airport.

At the market we hopefully meet-up with a guy name Hann from the research station Kate needs to go to. We give him 1,000 Kina about $400 for fuel for the boat and he drives us to the research station.

One slight wrinkle is that there is no way to call the research station, and they may think we are arriving on Monday, so we might get to spend the night in Lae. We sent him a text message to say we were coming a day earlier, but he has to walk for a few hours from the research station, and climb up a tree to get his messages, and of course Digicel is renowned for delivering messages days late if the receiver isn't connected when it comes in. I am hoping for the Lae International Hotel, rather than a pile of Banana leaves at the Eye Grease.

Release Date 5/13/2011

I released this message off of Simberi Island in the Tabar island group.

Kate and I went on a cruise with the good folks at PNG Surfaris on their ship the PNG Explorer. The Explorer is run by a couple Andrew and Jude who are great hosts.

This is really luxury cruising. The main business of the ship is taking surfers to remote surf spots during the surf season November – April, but they are now starting to add diving and fishing charters. The boat is really nice, Kate and I had a private cabin. The food is always amazing, and we were extra lucky because the fishermen were providing constant fresh fish at each stop. Note speargun in background.

The ship also features a spunky lorikeet mascot named Teop. Teop was a holy terror. Kate kept trying to be friends with him, and he would get along with her very nicely unless his owners were nearby. As soon as he saw one of his masters he would go into attack mode and skreetch and bite Kate who had been petting him or playing with him.That just made her want his attention all the more. I think I may learn something from this little bird...

From Kavieng we went to Lihir Island, where we picked-up two guys who flew in from Australia to go fishing, then we went to the Lyra Reef for a couple of days, and finished up in the Tabar island group.

The beautiful and small island of Lihir is off the East Coast of New Ireland about 100KM down the road from Kavieng and 35Kms off the coast. The island is the site of a HUGE gold mine. After an upgrade this year they plan to extract up to 1 Million ounces a year from the Mine. So that would be worth over 1 Billion Dollars a year.

We walked around the town a bit, but it was Saturday when we arrived so most things were closed. I had hoped to buy lots of groceries since the town has a lot of money there is more stuff available. I did managed to get a few things at one place that we got into right before it closed.

We couldn’t go a tour of the mine, but we did drive by in the motor boat to try and get a good look at it. We took some pictures, but we couldn’t get too close.

The photos with the round circle were through Kate’s binoculars.

The island is volcanic, and still slightly active. You can see all the steam vents that are venting the steam from the mine site in the pictures. The miners use this energy to produce some of the electricity for the facility which is pretty cool.

It’s really amazing to see such a large sophisticated complex in a remote place like this tiny island.

After Lihir we went to a huge offshore reef, called the Lyra Reef, that rises up from thousands of feet to within 30ft of the surface. This is very unique because it is about 100KM from Lihir the nearest land, so it is truly out in the ocean. The Explorer at over 60 feet is just barely able to go there safely.

Lyra is basically an extinct volcano that rose up from the floor of the sea, but didn’t form and island. It is arranged as an Atoll about 30 miles across. Kate and I did a number of dives and snorkels on it, and the coral cover and fish life was amazing.

On one dive there were hundreds of fish of all different types swirling around looking at us. They had probably never seen a diver before and just seemed to be curious. Since it is such a remote spot, and it rises up from the deep so it’s the only thing around for many many miles the fishing is very good.

The two other guests on the boat were fishermen, and spent every day trolling for fish. They caught a lot of dogtooth tuna, and Kate and I went out with them once and each caught a fish. The one I got was huge about 60lbs. See the photo. This is definitely the biggest fish I ever caught. We will be eating it for months since we were able to freeze it all. I'd like to say I speared it freediving, but it was rod and reel, and it was a big task to get it back to the boat. My arm was sore for a couple of days.

I’m sure this is most untouched and pristine place that I will ever dive at in my life. I’m really glad I was able to go.

Unfortunately it was pretty rough out there, and it got rougher and rougher as time passed so we had to leave after only 2 days. By that point just about all of us were a bit seasick. It was a shame we couldn’t spend more time diving and exploring.

We did find a couple of old fishing longlines on the bottom, and saw a large fishing boat that was probably laying one out on one day. So even though it is remote it is actively fished by these huge ships. Because it is rock and coral they can only do longline fishing, not net trawling which would be even more destructive.

The longlines can be miles long and we followed one that had been lost and was wrapped around the bottom for hundreds of yards. From the coral growth on it Kate thought it had only been there for 6 months or a year. We cut some of it away, but it was very heavy line, and there was just tons of it.

I estimate that the two guys who were fishing every day caught 1,000 KG of fish over the entire trip. The PNG Explorer crew had borrowed a large industrial freezer for the trip and if we had stayed at Lyra for longer they probably would have filled it all the way to the top. We all took fish home, and we also shared a lot with all the villagers we met at Tabar and Simberi.

When it got too rough we went to a protected anchorage at Tabar Island for a few days of more fishing and diving, and then over to Simberi Island. Like Lihir Simberi has a much smaller gold mine on it.

Last month the Provincial Government brought Kate out to asses the damage done by a Cyanide spill at the mine. Cyanide is used in gold mining the separate the gold from the rock. One of their holding tanks ruptured spilling it right into the water near the surface and it caused a huge fish kill, and extensive damage to the coral.

All of these mines use a system called Deep Sea Talings Disposal. Which basically just means having a giant pipe that dumps the tailings deep into the water. This is also pretty destructive, but the tailings are released at very deep depths so it doesn’t disrupt the coral and shallow water fish. This would never be allowed in the US or Australia, instead the mine would have to process the tailings, but here there are no regulations against it.

At Tabar we saw spinner dolphins jumping out of the water one day. I took a video, but it didn’t come out very well. These are small dolphins that leap up into the air and spin around quickly it looked really cool. They also played around the bow wake of the boat when it was at speed.

The next day we saw a large pod of pilot whales. These are very small whales, not much bigger than dolphins with round bulbous heads. They stayed around the boat, and we were able to get out into the water and snorkel with them which was really interesting. We took some pictures and videos, but it doesn’t do it justice.

At some points the whales would roll over underwater and look up at us. The younger/smaller ones seemed almost as interested in us as we were of them. In a few cases we just saw them come up from deep water and head directly toward us, turning away at the last minute when they reached the boat.

On two of the dives we saw old nets that had been lost from trawlers. These were huge heavy things that we couldn’t remove. At a reef off of Simberi part of the Net and floats formed a huge underwater arch that we could swim through below the surface. This had been there a long time there was hard coral growing around the rope such that it almost completely covered it.

This is my foot in a giant clam shell. The clam is no longer around, just his shell is left:

This is my head in a giant clamshell:

Check out this giant hunk of trawler net. It just went on and on down the slope to over 150ft, we couldn't see the end of it:

One of the most interesting fish we saw was a cuttlefish. These are related to squid, and they are very very good at blending into the background by changing colors quickly. They go from almost white when over sand to a very dark mottled color when on top of a coral backdrop. The video below shows it changing color and swimming away.

All in all it was a great adventure.

Truth: Its hard to remember everywhere you have been.

Release Date 4.25.2011

Release date 4/25/2011

I picked-up my boat from Kate’s office after it was repaired and paddled home. It was a nice day so I took a very long detour out to Edmago island. I got it fixed for K30 about $12!!

Also one more picture of the hole in my boat. That is water draining out of it!!

Saw a big school of tuna feeding, and tried to video them.

I bumped into a few people I knew out there who were snorkeling and saw this hawk. I think it is one of the hawks who live on Rawl, or maybe they have moved…

I saw a lot of people out in canoes. I think because it was calm they could easily launch. Also it was a holiday, Easter Monday, so everybody had time off to go fishing.

I timed myself coming back, I had a slight headwind, and was paddling the slower of my two boats, but I was warmed-up and paddling pretty hard:

45 minutes Edmago to SW tip of Nusa

45 minutes tip of Nusa to landing through the surf at my house.

This picture is our hot-tub. It was made by a bomb that missed the Japanese gun emplacements that used to be near our house. We sometimes sit in it for a cool off after a run or a hot day.

Truth: Sometimes it doesn’t rain

Release Date 4/23/2011

Kate was going to an event to kick off a Mangrove Planting program down the highway at the Solwara School. This is a facility run by Aslan Awareness a local NGO organization that she does a lot of work with.

They are about 5 miles down the coast. I decided I would try to paddle down to attend if I could find them and then either cartop or paddle back.

I had to run the market that morning because I had made an arrangement with a woman to purchase some rose bushes. It was the day before Easter, which iis a huge holiday here, a 4 day weekend, so she naturally didn’t show up, but I still bought a bunch of food and got a late start.

I had no idea if I could find their place because I have only been there a few times, and only by land. Fortunately I found a couple of kids swimming right about when I thought I might be close and they gave me vague directions (around the next point).

I then called Kate and guessed she and I were looking at the same point. I paddled for another 15 minutes, and thought I saw it, but it looked too small so I went further than called again.

Kate couldn’t see me, but other people on the beach told her I had already passed by, so I turned around and went in.

The whole thing was delayed so even though I got there at 11:00 it didn’t start till later.

The program was kicked-off by Miss PNG, Rachel James.

She is from New Ireland and is a Marine Bilologist. She has been an Ambassador for environmentalism and conservation, and has been in the news often promoting it.

Here is a picture of her and Kate. I just missed the embrace…

I wimped out and took a car ride home, since I had been cooked pretty well by the time I got there. The sunscreen washes off and I had much more sun on my hands and dark bands of intense tan.

I didn’t even realize it was Earth Day! It was actually Earth Day in the US, it was the day after Earth Day here.

There have been great and really full moons this week, that make it almost light when I ride to work in the dark in the mornings. This picture is about an hour before sunrise taken to the West out of Nusa Island. Really pretty and nice.

For Easter we went out to a local island, Uissen, with the staff from a restaurant in town “Bamboo” They had a great meal and all the kids had fun on an egg hunt. Unfortunately we got dumped on by intense rain and had to spend about 90 minutes huddled in the local’s huts, under trees, and even in the water trying to stay dry and warm. The food was great.

I never get over what litterbugs people are here. We should take them all to the US to see some of the beaches around NYC. The owner was trying to get them to keep things clean, but the minute she turned her back they would throw things in the ocean.

The beach and island was just stunning and beautiful, and they had chucked a huge bag of trash that we had picked-up, along with an assortment of beer cans, plates and foil. I picked it all up and brought it back to the boat, but noticed it wasn’t with us when we left. The people who lived there offered to “take care of it” hopefully this didn’t mean tossing it back in the ocean!

Truth:

You need water to live.

Release Date 4/15/2011

Tax day in the USA, a good day to go paddling in PNG…

I went for an afternoon paddle and then met Kate at Nusa resort on an island for drinks. Kate was swimming over from her office about ¾ of a mile, and I paddled from our house. I found her out in the harbor on her way there.

We passed this boat on way. It had a canoe in the middle of it, but they had offloaded the canoe by the time I took this picture. People have great names for boats. Our favorite is "Ey No Wrong yet" (nothing is wrong yet). Presumably this is a very negative way of saying "Smooth Sailing". It sort of sums up the attitude of the language and the culture.

We hung out with some of the other local ex-pats and had a nice dinner. It was a great night to paddle since the moon was full. Kate took a boat back to her truck, and I paddled back.

I was more than a bit nervous about the surf landing through the reef in the dark. Although I could see enough to paddle I could not see the swell and judge the landing well.

On the way out I was rejected once, and capsized. The tide was low on this return trip, so it was just dumping surf on rock. Very dangerous, but only for 30 or 40 feet since the full force of the wave is expended almost instantly when it breaks.

Our neighbors were sitting around a campfire down where I usually go through the surf, and they say my light. 3 or 4 kids were jumping up and down with burning log torches to make it more dramatic.

Eventually I just said what the hell and gave it a try. I made it in a bit, but then got nailed by a huge wave. It slammed the boat down into the reef, but I managed to brace into it, so I didn’t get rolled. It did make a really impressive noise.

When I got back over to our house I couldn’t lift the boat, the front seemed heavy. I had taken all Kate’s snorkel gear, but when I tried to unload it I realized the entire front hatch was flooded. I had torn a huge hole in the seem along the bow. A spot that had already leaked slightly and been patched several times.

Kate was Francis, a guy at her office, do some work on her boat, so I had him fix my boat as well. He did a great job for only K40 about $25. Her is a picture of him next to the boat.

I guess I have to limit night paddling, or find a better place to land.

Earlier in the afternoon I came home and found Jesus on my doorstep under a beer bottle. It took a while, but I realized somebody had stopped by to invite us to a religious gathering, and since they didn’t want the note to blow away they put it under a beer bottle. That was very “PNG”. …

Also checkout this funny picture from the newspaper. Some villagers caught a crocodile and were going to eat it, For some reason the paper wanted two pictures, but the inset picture is exactly the same as the main picture just smaller and oval. Not sure what the intent was.

Another funny newspaper picture. A story about 2 tourists in a double kayak getting swept out to sea and rescued by a fishing boat, accompanied by a picture of a person rolling a kayak. Not sure what the message is. Must have been the only kayak picture they had in inventory.

Here is a picture of Kate giving Stinky his Sunday breakfast of cognac infused French Toast with whipped cream. Stinky is VERY interested in it, so he has stood-up to take a whiff. He is a bit of snob, but this was good cognac so he ate it happily.

I have to keep a constant monitor on Kate so she doesn’t scoop up another puppy. Here she is with the neighbors dog, "Jealous", a very cute puppy, but becoming an annoying dog quickly.

Truth:

Its hard to give charity to people you know.

Rain Date 4/9/2011

My first time out paddling since I got back over 1 week ago. Just too busy and too much stuff going on, also the weather had been bad.

It had rained all day, and I thought it was finally over, but of course as soon as I got out in the water it started to dump on me again. It is so warm here, that it wasn’t a problem. I had a light jacket on, and got dumped on 2 times and still it wasn’t cold, quite a feat for a “chilly willy” like me.

I didn’t get around to releasing a message, and I didn’t stay out very long because I didn’t want to have to go through the surf in the dark.

I made it back to PNG successfully.

The airport was still closed when I arrived. There was a dispute between the local people and the government about a lot of money that the Government owed the traditional landowners when the town was built. This dispute went on for years and years, so the locals put a “Gor-Gor” on the airport. Basically they shut it down and post some branches from a special plant and nobody will dare cross it. Sort of like a curse. This is a very powerful mechanism, and the airport, which wasn’t even on disputed land was closed for 10 days. A big problem since there is only one airport on the island. This means no mail, no newspapers, 100 reservations a day canceled, if you run tourist business no customers, if you are on vacation no way home, etc etc…

I had arranged to get a lift with some friends who run a surf charter business. PNG Surfaris from the next island over. I flew in Rabaul in New Britian where they were picking up some of their clients the next day.

There was an assortment of other lost souls going to Kavieng. A pilot who lives in town, a dive tourist going to a resort, and some local guys coming back from a surf contest on the mainland of PNG. It was very luxurious, compared to the other option: an open crossing in a "banana boat", a trip through the hills, and then down the coast in a public mini bus. That would have been hot, dangerous, and exhausting.

I saw this big ship on my way back home.


It is run by a company called “Nautilis” they are doing deep sea mining. Everyone in the conservation community is worried about the impact it will have when it brings tons of silt up from the bottom. God knows what will happen deep down below 1,000 feet or more where they are sucking up all the dirt. Currently they are just doing testing. The ship doesn’t anchor it just hovers with a computer controlled positioning system using thrusters and GPS. I passed it on the way back to Kavieng.

I didn't enjoy the cruise much because I was still getting over my cold, was jetlagged, and just wanted to be back home. We were delayed one additional day by a cancelled flight of their paying customers, but finally left on Monday morning, and arrived in Kavieng the next morning. I think that makes a new record for a NYC->PNG leg of about 100 hours.

The drought broke when I was away, and it rained quite a bit. So everything is green again, and our water tank is full to overflowing.

The surf has died down, so it is not so noisy at our house, and it is safe to get out by kayak or swim out to the ocean. There were a number of weeks where it was too dangerous to get out from our beach.

As we get toward the end of our stay I feel I need to do more outdoor fun stuff because I know I will miss it when we go back home.