Lifting Me Highlands and Higher

The jolt of the airplane hitting the runway announced our arrival into the highlands, one of the most unpredictable places in Papua New Guinea. We collected our luggage and jumped into a PMV with some other tourists, among them a Romanian named Horia, who we had met in the Sepik, and his friend Cliff, a local who was hosting Horia through Couch Surfing. We had managed to secure a reservation at the Goldline Lodge by calling from the Sepik a week prior, a necessity during the time of the Mt. Hagen Cultural Show, one of the two most important Highland festivals. Unfortunately for us, we arrived at the hotel to find out the owner had died two days earlier and the hotel was being occupied by family who were in town for the funeral the following day. The manager was kind enough to offer us a room, but we took his insistence about being disturbed by wailing family members as a subtle hint that we should look elsewhere for accommodation. He and some of the staff were even more kind enough to drive us around to look for another place to stay. After looking at a hotel where a stay there would guarantee us annoyance by drunks, we called Horia to ask Cliff for advice.

After talking to Cliff we met up with them at his office and were invited to stay with them at Cliff’s traditional village just outside of Mt. Hagen. Despite being a little weathered from the Sepik, we took the invitation. While wandering around the market looking for food that evening we discovered that staying at the Goldline would have been a mistake. Across the street a funeral was in procession. By comparison, Westerners mourn quietly at funerals. Here the wails could be easily heard down the block. It’s easily discerned that people here feel loss very deeply and emotionally. The funerals can carry on for a few days, until all of the family has arrived from various parts of the country and has had their chance to mourn the deceased.

The night at Cliff’s village was spent in the cooking hut around the fire, baking potatoes and watching Horia prepare a large pot of delicious vegetable soup. It was a great forum, where we traded stories and facts about each other’s cultures and expanded our worldly minds. The only unwanted guest was the smoke from the fire, which due to lack of a chimney, sits at head level in the hut, making your eyes burn and water. Contrary my great engineering ability, Cliff wouldn’t let me smash a hole in the ceiling. Although the smoke was annoying, the heat of the fire made up for it by leaps and bounds. The cool air of the highlands was a shock to our systems, which had become used to the warm and humid oceanic and jungle weather we had been immersed in the past few weeks.

The next day we woke early and headed down to a large waterfall for a wash. It being a cold morning and I choosing to be a pussy, I declined to jump in and not subject myself to wet underwear for the rest of the day. After a quick stop and breakfast and Cliff’s office we jumped in with his staff and headed for the Cultural Show Grounds. Cliff is the director for the Mt. Hagen NGO for AIDS awareness and prevention which has a number of offices throughout PNG. The festival had two options for patrons: pay four Kina and sit in the outer ring to watch the show, or pay three hundred Kina and be front and center for the show, then have the ability to mingle with the cultural groups. After doing the latter at the Crocodile Festival in Ambunti, and due to the cost, we decided to pay the four Kina and stick with the NGO staff. One dick head security staff had another idea. He claimed to be on the organizing committee. I think he was lying and was just some random goof. His opinion was that because we were white, we had to pay the three hundred Kina to enter. “You can’t see our culture for free, you have to pay to see it. And if you can’t afford it, you leave here and go home” was his line, an ignorant attitude for an ignorant person expecting us to cave and pay him a bribe.

Fuck that, we weren’t going to satisfy him with a cent of our money. Instead we decided we’d had enough of fighting for the right to be in a festival that wasn’t a huge loss to miss, and walked off, intending to head back to Hagen and grab our belongings to start an early journey to Mt. Wilhelm. After waiting for half an hour, some security guards escorted us into the festival free of charge, obviously embarrassed and ashamed about the jackass misrepresenting them and the festival. We headed inside and took a position on the outer hill surrounding the rugby field where the sing sing groups were performing. The long distance views were unimpressive, so we made our way over to the gate where the sing sing groups were entering the field. There turned to be the absolute prime spot, where I was able to get a ton of close up snapshots of the performers as they danced into the grounds. The last group marched through the gate, the security staff scrambling to get it closed in time to stop the mad rush that attempted to break through. We were right there with the rush. It closed in the nick of time, shouts being exchanged from both sides of the fence. Spotting the two white heads in the crowd, a couple security guards called us over, inviting us to pay a “late fee” of twenty Kina to enter. Obviously a bribe, we decided these guys were much more deserving of it, and we paid. We were unleashed into the grounds, running around in front of all the tourists who had paid three hundred to get in. HA HA HA. It’s time like these I relish being an opportunistic backpacker in a country that only hosts luxury tourists that arrive on expensive pre paid tours and hide away in their hotels. Again, we mingled with the cultural groups, exchanging laughs and handshakes and taking a bunch of goofy photos.

The next day we departed Mt. Hagen on a PMV bound for Kundiawa, where we would catch another ride up the mountain to Kegesuglo, the base for the trek up the highest mountain in PNG, Mt. Wilhelm. We arrived there and found out catching a ride up the mountain was not going to be as easy as we had originally thought. The road up the mountain is notoriously rough, so only 4x4 vehicles are suitable, and with a bi-election going on, many of the trucks were being used for campaigning. As the day wore on, the son of a family that ran a guest house in Kegesuglo insisted that we be off the streets by 3pm, the time that election violence is likely to start. Elections in PNG are serious business, and people will resort to violence to support their political candidate. Not something you want to be caught in the middle of. As luck would have it, a pickup truck loaded with cargo arrived offering a ride up the mountain. It turned out to be not such good luck.

Riding around in the back of pickup trucks has become commonplace in my year of traveling, and that day it became apparent that I had been complacent towards the dangers that exist with this type of travel, dangers that have caused this activity to become outlawed back home. Wedged in the back of the truck between a load of tied down cargo and a tire sat upright against the tail gate, this day became the first time I’ve literally feared for my life. The truck bounced and bucked around on the road, hitting ruts half a foot deep, lifting us out of our seats. With my feet wedged between the tire and the cargo, I had no chance of bailing if things turned ugly. Hanging on for dear life, all I could do was look over the side of the box at the canyon inches away from our tire, a canyon that would surely spell my death if I was launched out of the box or if the truck rolled. The driver kept the gas pinned to keep the momentum through the muddy patches, sending the truck fishtailing dangerously towards deep ruts and giving his passengers a ride similar to a trampoline.
Eventually the truck was stopped by wet rocks that wouldn’t give the tires hope of a grip on their slippery surfaces. Deciding this was a good time to engage the four wheel drive (why the fuck he hadn’t done that at the start, I don’t know), we took a break to put on our rain jackets. This was the point where we discovered the driver was pissed drunk, staggering around and slurring his words. It was also at this point where it happened to be past the point of no return. We were committed. Our lives were in the hands of this drunk. Helplessness is not an enjoyable feeling.

The ride continued on as usual, being slammed around in the back of the truck on a road perched precariously high above a canyon. After a while it wasn’t that I felt safer and more comfortable, I just became used to being scared. All I could do was shake my head as one, two, and three SP beer bottles were discarded from the driver’s window. All this time the locals in the back with us, not sitting with us but hanging on to the sides of the cargo pile above the box line, had not a worry in the world. This was simply a way of life for them, the apparent risk to their lives unacknowledged.

Obviously because I’m writing this means I lived through this escapade. I can look back on this as a learning experience. Not all experiences of living like the locals are positive, it’s inevitable that you’ll end up immersed in the negative aspects at some point, and all you can do is hope that you come out of it unscathed. Sorry family, I know you’re probably shaking your heads at this post, but trust me when I say I’ll never be put in this situation again as long as I have something to say about it.

On the positive note, the mountain scenery of PNG is nothing short of beautiful. The lush valleys and mountains surround the classic, humble villages. The guest house we checked into was set among a beautiful, well manicured yard complete with flowers and stone walkways. Run by a lovely couple, we were treated and fed well. One of the biggest highlights of the region is the fresh vegetables that have one of the most suitable climates on Earth to grow in. They are the pure definition of organic, not a drop of chemical every touches them. And they are the best tasting veggies I’ve ever had in my life.

The soreness in our muscles convinced us to take a rest day in Kegesuglo and prepare for the trek up Mt. Wilhelm the following day. We wandered about the village, guided by a young boy who toured us through the gardens and showed us the various vegetables and fruits that they grow and forage from the wild. We attempted to acclimatize ourselves to the noticeably colder weather, which lowered into the single digits at night. It was this day that we received a text and subsequently called Horia, who had some crazy news to share. Apparently we had left Mt. Hagen in the nick of time. The evening after we left Horia had been waiting for Cliff at his office. Cliff entered around 6pm wearing war paint on his face. Tribal warfare had ignited with his enemy tribe, supposedly over the beating and mutilation of a woman (I’m not sure on which side), and now revenge was being called for. Cliff and Horia spent the whole night running around Mt. Hagen, hiding and attempting to find his family who was also in hiding. The entire village was on red alert, men patrolling the roads and trails armed with machetes and who knows what else. Horia eventually ended up making it to a guest house and to safety, but to this day we don’t know what came of Cliff, I can just hope he and his family are ok. It was unsettling to think that some of the friendly people that we had exchanged laughs and handshakes with could be dead right now. It goes to show that nobody in this country is untouchable from tribal warfare, even a person running an NGO for AIDS awareness. That being said, being educated paints a target as your back, as the enemy will see that person as valuable to the opposing clan, somebody that can bring in money. This is life in the Highlands. Tribal warfare is brutal and common, and can sometimes be fought over something as simple as a tiny strip of land to grow coffee beans.

After our rest day we started our trek up towards Mt. Wilhelm. We set out in the morning for the guest house, located at an alpine lake at the foot of the rocky mountain range. It was necessary to stay the night there acclimatize to the high altitude and because the trek up the mountain must be started at 2am to reach the summit by daybreak, after which the clouds will roll in and make the views totally obscured. The trek to the guest house was uneventful, a quick two hour hike through a moss covered forest. We arrived at the guest house to a cold wind and rain, dropping our bags and quickly lighting a fire in the small shelter. Our guide, Johnny ran out to the bus with his sling shot and quickly came back with a small bird he had killed, a green snow parrot. The man is a crack shot with his sling shot, nailing this one square in its thumb sized head. I can’t say it tasted great, more or less like overcooked chicken. That night we cooked a quick meal and hit the fart sack by 6pm to get all the rest we could for the very, very early hike the next day.

Enter 2am. We wake up to shivering cold and darkness. Working up the motivation we climb out of our sleeping bags and don our meagre layers that afford us a small amount of protection from the cold that I’ve become unaccustomed to the past year. That’s the thing about traveling light, being prepared for cold climates doesn’t go hand in hand with that doctrine. With flashlights in hand (Matt’s being a single LED on his cell phone) we started the slog up the mountain. Immediately stepping down the trail from the guest house, I don’t see and dunk my foot right into a mud hole. Now my right foot is soaked. The rest of the trail isn’t much better, the rain the previous evening has created runoff that is making its way down the mountain, lubricating the clay based mud on the slopes, making footing difficult.

By 5:30 am we were just below the col that signalled the approach to the summit. The first light of the day was just starting to show itself on the horizon, telling us we were a little being schedule for the sunrise. This was fine with me, the wind was cold and was also not something I wanted to be sitting in on top of the summit. Climbing further up the mountain marked the first time in a year and a half that I’ve slipped on ice. Matt and I left Johnny at the foot of the summit and scrambled up the rock chute, the last obstacle facing us. We reached the top, sitting on the rocks in the howling wind, quickly soaking up the amazing views and pain from our freezing hands. Should have kept those gloves from China. The sun was blazing on the horizon, illuminating this amazing shapes of the clouds that were creeping up from the valley below. Even though freezing cold, it was incredible to stand at the top of PNG and view the incredible landscape, on terrain I would have never imagined this country contained.

We made the long descent all the way back to Kegesuglo, where we arrived exhausted and sore. We also arrived to news that the guest house owners were gone due to their mother’s death and the funeral that was happening a few villages down, but we were still able to have a good meal and a good night’s sleep. At this point death was starting to become too commonplace around us and it was time to get out of the highlands. The next day we caught a ride in a truck back down the mountain. This time the driver was very sober and we rode in the front. This still did not stop us from getting stuck in the mud. It took us and the seven other locals to push it up the muddy slope. This marks the last adventure in PNG. Afterwards it was a simple PMV ride to Madang where we chilled out and did much of nothing for a couple days, and another PMV ride to Lae, where I sit in the airport at the moment typing the last of this post, waiting for my flight to Port Moresby that has been pushed back three hours. After all this time in PNG, I just realized all I had to do to get free wifi was come to the Lae airport!