TRAVELLER Diary of a hardcore trekker
Journey’s end … George Anian (with boots on) at the hut where he stayed on the last night before canoeing to Kerema and then boarding a PMV to Port Moresby.
Titikama Village to bush camp. It’s December 25. Happy Christmas, and have a good day! We are well into the lowland jungle now. The vegetation is getting thicker and the sunlight is not penetrating through the canopy. When we start walking there is more rain and by the time it is getting dark we have clocked only nine hours of trekking. For sure we have had a bad day but there is nothing much we can do except set up camp under a big tree for the night. What are we having for Christmas dinner? One of the boys calls out “corned beef and biscuits”. The boys kindly build me a little shelter out of wild banana leaves. I’m too tired to celebrate Christmas, and slip into my sleeping bag straight after dinner.
42 Paradise – Air Niugini’s in-flight magazine
OUR REGION
Bush camp to an unnamed village. It’s all downhill from here and I have a great sense of achievement when I am woken by the boys at 3.30am. They are singing and explain it is because they have done something good in almost completing the trek and they feel happy. It is our last day of actual walking because tomorrow we will travel by canoe and PMV, all the way into Port Moresby. We descend to sea level and clocked 10 hours on the trail. Our dinner is a typical Kerema-style meal, sago and fish.
Goroka
R MA BIS SEA
Marawaka Menyamya
CK
Kanabea Kerema
Village to Port Moresby. We walk for only 20 minutes from the village house where we have stayed to a river to get a ride on a canoe to Kerema. It is a very slow-moving river, about a kilometre wide, and there are not many villages along the way. At Kerema, we board a PMV to Port Moresby along the Hiritano Highway.
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Km 100
Port Moresby
It is exciting sitting among the locals and buai (betel nut) on the PMV. I’m stuck in one position for seven hours, but it is not as bad as walking for 10 hours. At the end of it all, amazingly I have ended up with only nine blisters on my feet and lost two big-toe nails. But more importantly, I have achieved what I set out to do: walk from Marawaka to Port Moresby in eight days.
0 100 Km
The author, from Salamaua in the Morobe Province, spent the next five days resting, eating and enjoying the company of his three children and four grandchildren.