Sorry ladies, I'm taken

Well my time in PNG has now come to an end. The last 5 months have been some of the most memorable and enjoyable months of my life. I can not speak highly enough of the friends I have made in such a short period of time. There was one person in particular that I have gotten to know particularly well over the last few months. If you look back at previous posting of the last few months Tiffany's name pops up every now and again, but to my surprise these mentions didn't even trigger a comment from any family members. It seems Daryl's comment on Shannon while I was in Vancouver has made him a little reluctant to try and hassle me in such a public forum. Any way I was rather excited when Tiffany (also known as T) suggested that she would like to come and spend a week in New Zealand over the Christmas period. T was able to get a seat on the same flight as me from Cairns to Auckland, resulting in the potentially awkward situation of being greeted at the airport by my parents, brothers and nephews and nieces. Being the somewhat cautious person that I am, my family had heard nothing of T other than the few mentions on my blog. My nephew Jordan quickly decided that he wanted to find out a bit more about T so proceeded to ask a bunch of questions, getting sillier and sillier as he went.

The next day we spent looking around Auckland a little. We went and had lunch at a cafe in town before jumping on the ferry over to Devonport where we walked around NorthHead and Mt Victoria. The weather treated us very kindly, not a drop of rain. Yep a December day in Auckland without any rain, what a pleasant change. After returning to the city we stopped in at the Domain to try and see the gardens but they were already closed so we had to settle for a little walk around the duck ponds. We tried getting some photos of the ducklings but they kept moving so none of them turned out all that good.

The next day we took a trip down to Waitomo and went black water rafting. It was great fun. Black water rafting involves floating down a river in a cave in inner tubes. There are a few small waterfalls that you have to jump off which was good fun. You get to see the glow worms too so all in all it is a pretty cool little trip. After Waitomo we went to Rotorua, taking a somewhat scenic route that wises maps recommended. Some of the directions were not particularly accurate, like when it said to go straight instead of left. Fortunately my impeccable sense of direction didn't get us lost and we made it to Rotorua. The next day we went up the Gondola and raced each other on the Luge. You sit on these 3 wheel trolley things and go down a windy concrete track, ranging in length from 2km for the scenic track to 1km for the advanced track. If you are ever in Rotorua then it is well worth a visit.

In the afternoon we took a trip to Mt Maunganui to see the beach and have a spot of dinner on the way back up to Auckland.

On Sunday we went to my church where it was nice to be able to catch up with everyone again, then we had lunch with Kris and Amy, followed by a trip to Piha beach to show T what black sand looks like. Then it was off to the carols in the park where we met up with the family for a picnic. Jiggles the clown was there too and he kept the kids amused.

Monday was largely taken up with last minute Christmas shopping followed by a family dinner so that everyone could get to know T a bit better.

Christmas day was not quite so good weather wise, with a few showers here and there but we did still manage to get a quick game of badminton in after dinner to try and burn off a few calories.

And that pretty much wraps up the week that T was here in NZ. It was far too short a visit really.

Mt Wilhelm

As mentioned in my last post, last weekend I went on a hike up the highest mountain in PNG, Mt Wilhelm. There were 6 of us that went, and it was a very fun bunch of people to go with. In order to get to the hut before dark we needed to leave Ukarumpa bright and early, so we met at 6am and loaded the Hilux and by 6:30 we were on our way. Thankfully, we had no holdups and had a very smooth trip for the first 4 hours, we didn't even hit too many potholes. Then the fun started. Once we turned off the Highlands Highway at Kundiawa the road became much more interesting. This road was not sealed at all and was full of large bumps and mud puddles, not the kind of road you would go down without 4WD. Chris seemed to enjoy driving down this road. After about 2 hours of driving down this windy, steep, rocky, at times muddy road we made it to Keglsugl where we found parked the hilux and started the hike to the hut.

The hike up to the hut was a relatively simple hike, much like a lot of the bush walks around New Zealand. It took around 3 1/2 hours, including a few stops to re-hydrate and to admire the view. Most of the hike was through bush, very similar looking to the Waitakare Ranges in Auckland at points, with lots of ferns around. Near the end of the hike the trail went through a meadow with just a few ferns dotted around, it looked very much like something out of Jurassic Park. At the end of this meadow kind of thing was a pretty cool waterfall, then a little further on was the hut, nestled in at the base of a hill, a minutes walk away from the beautiful lake.

At this point I experienced being cold for the first time in PNG, sure I had felt slightly nippy a couple of times in Ukarumpa before, but nothing I would really classify as cold. This was cold, so cold in fact that I decided that it was cold enough to wear socks on my hands. Still it wasn't quite cold enough to change out of shorts.

We decided to explore our surroundings a little before it got dark, so we went on a little walk down to the lake. The lake was almost perfectly still, and a very good mirror reflection could be seen of the hills behind the lake. It was really quite a magnificent site. It would almost be worth doing the hike just to the hut to see the view there, although once you factor in the hours of driving to get to the start of the hike I think the cost/benefit ratio would not be looking all that favourable. So I guess what I am saying is if you happen to be driving past Keglsugl it would be well worth stopping and hiking up to the hut. The odds of you just so happening to be driving past are not all that high though so I guess most of this paragraph is kind of useless.

After admiring the lake we went back to the hut to eat dinner. We decided to go for the good old PNG staple of rice with instant noodles and tuna. Not exactly a gourmet meal, but it tasted just fine to us. Then after dinner we took an early night to try and get at least a couple of hours of shut-eye before starting the hike to the summit.

At 12am we all reluctantly stumbled out of bed in the freezing cold and got ourselves organised for the hike. We had prepared some breakfast bars a few days before so we all chowed in to them. They tasted pretty good, although a little on the sweet side for my liking. At 12:30 we were all ready for the hike so set off following our guides for the 5-6 hour hike to the highest point in PNG.

After about 1/2 an hour it became apparent that the breakfast bars were not sitting favourably for most of us, and the realisation was made that we didn't bring enough toilet paper to adequately deal with the aftermath of the breakfast bars. At around about that stage Lisa decided to turn back to the hut, hiking at that altitude can be tough and she was finding it really difficult. We sent one of the guides back with her, instructing him to catch us up and to bring extra toilet paper with him. Unfortunately that guide was also not feeling all that well and we suspect he decided to sleep for a couple of hours before heading back up the mountain. We caught up with him again about a quarter of the way back down again.

I don't really have much to say about the next 4 hours or so. The hike wasn't really all that difficult, although it was pretty tiring, especially as I had my pack on my back with a big bottle of water, a bunch of clothes that I had taken off after I warmed up a little, some chocolate and as I found after returning to the hut a loaf of banana bread. Hiking in the dark is not the most pleasant of experiences either, you don't get to enjoy the view so much and you don't really see much of where you are heading. Only having 3 hours sleep (and interrupted sleep at that) didn't help much either.

At around 5am Chris and Andrea decided they were feeling too sick to continue up the mountain. We stopped and discussed what we should do, whether we should split up, or whether we should all just turn back. A couple of minutes before this we had passed a plaque in memory of some chap who died on the mountain. He had twisted his ankle and remained behind while the rest of his group went to the summit. It is assumed that he must have tried finding his own way back down the mountain and fallen in to a ravine. This plaque made me more than just a little reluctant to leave Chris and Andrea to find their own way down in the dark. After 30 minutes of deliberation we decided to start heading back down the mountain again, we had failed. After hiking down for 5 or so minutes we stopped again and the deliberations started up again. By this time the first sign of sunrise could be seen and I was convinced by the others that it would now be safe enough for Chris and Andrea to find their own way back down the mountain. So Deb, Matt and I turned around and started to head back up. During the deliberation we were told that we still had a good 3 hours to go. Fortunately this was proven to be a bit of an exaggeration and we were able to make it to the summit by 7am.

The view from the top was breathtaking, or maybe that was the hike up the mountain. Either way I was breathing pretty hard by the time I reached the top. It was a gorgeous day, unusually clear for Mt Wilhelm that late in the morning. We could see all the way to Karkar island, and a bunch of other places a long way away. Some of the valleys had swirly clouds in them and looked really cool. We stayed up the top for 30 minutes or so before slowly starting our hike back down to the hut. We were all absolutely exhausted by this stage, so the walk down seemed to be a lot more difficult than the walk up was. On a couple of occasions I managed to sneak in a few minutes of sleep. Our guide was feeling pretty lousy by this stage, I think he had a really bad headache, and we found we were pretty much ahead of him for most of the trip down. At one point he fell asleep and Deb had quite a job trying to wake him up.

Finally we made it down to the hut by around 11am and had a spot of lunch, pasta with tomato pasta sauce. I then played Rook (a card game) for a while before taking a long nap.

I won't describe the rest of the trip in detail as it was nothing particularly noteworthy and this blog is long enough already and I have another blog entry I want to write after this one.

All in all the trip was well worthwhile and I enjoyed it. In saying that, I never want to do it again, it is definitely a once in a lifetime trip for me.

Lone Tree - training for Mt Wilhelm

Last Saturday a bunch of us went on a little hike up to the top of Lone Tree, the top of one of the ridges around the valley that Ukarumpa is nestled in. Lone Tree is a rather poor name for the hill that we were going up, as at the top of the hill is a forest, apparently it was named before the landowners planted the forest and I guess no-one has bothered to update the name yet.


The best time for hiking around these parts seems to be in the morning, as it usually starts raining in the afternoon. That fact in mind, it was decided that we would meet at 9 in the morning, a time of day I rarely see during the weekend. Still I managed to drag myself out of bed in time and even managed a spot of breakfast before heading off. It was a stunner of a day, nice and sunny but not too hot, perfect conditions really.


Just outside the gates of Ukarumpa we came across a river that we had to cross, so we all waded across, some finding better paths than others. Not far after the river we walked through a village, then through some gardens. Around about then some children from the village decided that we didn't know the way, so they became our guides, leading us all the way to the top and back down safely. Dan rewarded them with a bag of corn chips for their hard work.

All up the hike took around 4 hours going at a somewhat leisurely pace. A grand time was had by all, as far as I could tell.

For some of us there was a secondary reason for doing this hike (although I would have still gone anyway). Next weekend 6 of us are going to climb the highest peak in PNG, Mt Wilhelm. At a height of 4,509 metres it is around 1,000 metres higher than Mt Cook, New Zealand's highest mountain, so the altitude will certainly be making the hike somewhat more difficult than lone tree was. We leave Friday morning and drive for 5 or so hours before starting a 4 hour hike to a lake and a cabin where we can have a spot of dinner before trying to get a couple of hours sleep. Then at 1am we have to get up again and start the climb to the summit in order to arrive at around sunrise. Leaving it much later is not such a good idea as the mountain usually is clouded over an hour after sunrise, and we would really like to see the view from the top. Then we will descend back down to the cabin where we will spend the afternoon and night before going the back to the vehicle the next morning. Hopefully that will give us time to go to "The Bird" in Goroka for dinner on the way home. It should be a blast, the others I am going with are really fun people. I'll keep y'all posted on how the trip goes next week.