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.

Thanksgiving and Earthquake

Well as some of you are probably aware Thursday was American thanksgiving day, and as a fair proportion of the missionaries here in Ukarumpa are of US decent thanksgiving is celebrated here too. It would appear that being a single American guy would be kind of nice this time of year, Chris my roommate has been invited to 4 different thanksgiving meals this year, not a bad effort. However the celebrations are not restricted to Americans, I went to a lovely thanksgiving dinner on Thursday at Tiffany's place along with 9 others. There were 7 Americans, 2 Aussies and myself (a New Zealander). A grand time was had by all, we had plenty of yummy food and none of the strange American dishes like sweet potato with marshmallows on top (sorry to any of you who may be reading this who gave me any of this in Vancouver, you are still all very nice people despite your eating habits). While we waited for the main course to settle we all shared something we are thankful for and then we had a good old sing-a-long. Then came dessert, now this time Americans have got it right and us New Zealanders could learn a thing or two. Pumpkin pie is the business, a great use for the humble pumpkin.

Just as I was getting in to the van to go down to thanksgiving the earth started shaking. It didn't take too long to establish that I was experiencing an earthquake, and a much more significant one than I had previously experienced. The earthquake lasted much longer than any of the other quakes that occur every now and again over here, I would guess it lasted a good 30 seconds or so. The reported size of the quake was 6.7 and was centred 100km off the coast from Lae, so it was a fair way away from Ukarumpa. Still it was violent enough to put a large leak in our water tank as well as another 8 tanks around Ukarumpa. The repair dudes replaced our tank yesterday and then finished plumbing it in this morning, so now we just have to wait for more rain to fill it up, and based on the weather pattern we have been experiencing lately I expect that it should only take a couple of days to fill up the tank. It certainly appears that we are moving in to the rainy season, every afternoon it starts raining some time between 1 and 4 and keeps raining most of the night; rather inconvenient when I forget to take my umbrella to work after lunch.

Carnival

Last Saturday one of the highlights of the Ukarumpa calendar took place, the Ukarumpa Carnival.

All your favourite carnival food was available like candy floss/cotton candy/fairy floss, donuts, funnel cakes, ice cream, plus a variety of other food items of a more savoury nature. I particularly liked the donuts, freshly made with either vanilla, maple or chocolate glaze, yummy. It was a gorgeous day which in turn meant that I was kind of thirsty, so I went through a fair few bottles of root beer and cream soda (I don't think they had any water on sale or I would have chosen that). By the end of the day I had quite enough sugary stuff.

There were all sorts of fun activities the whole family could enjoy. The mini golf was pretty good, a very interesting course although it could have been improved if the grass had been mowed beforehand.

The sumo-wrestling in inner tubes was a little on the tiring side but fun none the less. I had a slight advantage in the group that I joined, as I was a little bigger than the others, and the only guy

The 12th grade boys had a great time going around arresting people and putting them in jail until they would pay to be released. Quite a little money making business, someone would pay to get you put in jail, plus they could pay more to keep their name a secret. But the prisoner could pay more to find out who the scoundrel was that put them behind bars.


But by far the most popular attraction of the day was the ferris wheel, or ferris square if you you want to be more precise. This was built by one of the men here back in 1995 and is operated each year by the 11th grade boys. They sure must have been tired by the end of the day, they were busy all day pushing people around and around. I decided to cut them a bit of a break and I just watched.

News from the kitchen

For those of you who read my blog during my year in Vancouver, you may recall that I would regularly post reviews of various meals I had enjoyed cooking. I realised that I have not been doing that lately so I thought I would take this opportunity to tell y'all about my recent experimentation with the middle eastern favourite falafel. Sorry I don't have a camera any more so there are not photos to accompany this review, you will have to use your imagination.

Falafel are little fried balls made mainly of chickpeas (or Garbanzo beans whatever you want to call them). As the selection of meat here is not all that great I have been finding vegetarian dishes to be more and more of an appealing option lately, especially dishes using chickpeas. I first tried my hand at making falafel a few months ago, the first attempt was not bad, definitely a recipe I considered worth trying again and experimenting a little with. The second time I forgot a vital ingredient, flour is essential to help the falafel hold together, after trying to shallow fry a couple of them I found that my oil was extremely dirty and my falafel were very small. So I added the flour and reshaped all my falafel then tried again, still using the dirty oil. They were
not all that good and it kind of put me off attempting them for a couple of months. Then last week Chris and I were deciding what to have for dinner and I suggested trying falafel again. As good as falafel are, they really need something to go with them, some kind of sauce or dip or something, so I decided to try another chickpea staple, hummous. Wow, what a great meal that was, who would have though the humble chickpea could so easily be made in to 2 wonderful dishes. The unfortunate side effect was the strong taste of garlic left in my mouth for the rest of the evening, but that is a small price to pay. I was so impressed by the falafel and hummous that I thought I should share the experience with others, and as Deb has frequently had Chris and I over for dinner I thought I would repay the favour. So on Wednesday I invited Deb over to share in the falafel experience. This time I decided to try a slightly different recipe, as I had not been entirely happy with the texture of the previous attempts. This recipe involved rolling the falafel in sesame seeds before frying. It was a great idea, the sesame seeds added a little crunch and tasted just superb. As I had planned this meal a few days ahead I made sure I had other sauces available as well, well actually it was just more hummous and some unsweetened yoghurt, but it was certainly a great addition to the meal. Then to make the meal complete I baked some pita bread, and to my surprise they actually worked pretty well, good enough for us to stuff them with hummous, yoghurt and falafel without them falling apart.

So now after these last 2 falafel experiences I am right in falafel mode again, and each time I go to the store I can't resist buying another can or two of chickpeas, just in case. I have my eye on a rather yummy looking eggplant dip that I spotted in a magazine the other week, so maybe I will have to try that with my next falafel adventure.

The Golf Course

Well once again it has been far too long since my last blog update. In my last post I hinted at an upcoming review of the Ukarumpa golf course so I guess I should start with that.

On my first day here in Ukarumpa I was having lunch with the Hinton family and was pleased to learn that Ukarumpa has it's own golf course, and whats more membership fees are non-existant (well I think they are anyway). I was eagerly looking forward to the opportunity to display my prowess with a golf club, and pretty excited at the prospect of driving a golf ball while at such a high altitude. The boost that would do to my ego would be substantial I am sure, I mean who wouldn't be impressed by 350 meter drives? After expressing this to a few people I was informed that the golf course was not really that kind of a course, it is more of a pitch and putt kind of arrangement. Furthermore it is not a full size pitch and putt, there are 3 holes and 3 tees so if you play all combinations then you get a 9 hole course, play every hole twice and there is your 18 holes.


I didn't hear much more about the golf course for a few months, when I made a passing comment to someone that I had heard there was a golf course somewhere but I had not yet seen it. In reply I was told that I have walked or driven past it numerous times. When they explained exactly where it was I couldn't get myself to believe them, it looked like a small vacant section, awaiting the time when the number of staff here necessitated the addition of a couple more houses. Melanie and I decided one day to find out once and for all if this was in fact the golf course, so went in search of tell tale signs of a golf course, the holes. This was not an easy task as the grass was kind of long at the time, but eventually I found evidence of the existence of the golf course, 1 hole partially covered by grass but most definitely a hole non the less. It turns out that the guy who was maintaining the course is not in Ukarumpa at the moment, he is either on furlough or gone for good, I'm not sure which, so the course was in a state of disrepair. Rumour has it that there has been a renewed interest in the golf course and it has been mowed now so I will have to check it out some time.

The hole.

The entire course, all 9 holes

Birthday party

I thought I would take a few minutes to update everyone on what I did this year for my birthday. My birthday was on a Saturday this year so it was jolly nice being able to sleep in on my birthday for a change. A number of my friends were away for the weekend so I decided to have my party last Wednesday when more people were around. Tiffany kindly offered to make dinner for everyone and to hold the party at her place, a very good idea considering that my house cleaner only comes Monday and Thursday so by Wednesday we are normally a little low on clean dishes. On a side note it is really very nice having someone come and do laundry and clean the dishes and make a cooked lunch twice a week, I'm sure I will take a while to get used to not having this wonderful service when I leave here. Any way back to the party, Tiffany made a lovely curry for dinner and also organised party games and a cake. All I had to do was invite people, oh and I also made icecream for desert but more about that later.

A few weeks ago I told a bunch of my friends here about the little run in I had with a horse while driving my car 10 years or so ago. Apparently they enjoyed this story and I guess they thought it would be funny to hassle me a bit about it. So for the main party game of the evening we had a rousing game of "crash the car in to the horse", a twist on the party favourite "pin the tail on the donkey".

After the game I was presented with my very own racing car cake, and a very interesting cake it was. Now to accompany the cake I had made the icecream that I was shown how to make in my french cooking class in Vancouver. It was basil flavoured icecream and most people were a little skeptical about the desirability of having basil and icecream mixed together. Admittedly I was not all that convinced about the idea until I tasted it, but it actually works pretty well. Most people claimed to enjoy it, so either they were lying or it wasn't bad.


After cake we played a game of beans (a very cool card game) but unfortunately it doesn't really work so well with 10 people so the game wasn't the best, it works much better with 4 or 5 people.

That about raps up the birthday party. Tune in next time for photos of the Ukarumpa golf course, rather a grand course.

The long promised fireworks review

Well time has just been flying by and I realize it has been a good couple of weeks since I promised the posting on what people do for entertainment in Ukarumpa. I would have gotten around to this sooner, but I couldn't be bothered, sorry.
Anyway…

A while ago now a bunch of us decided to have a fireworks evening. Fireworks are not readily available in the store here so we had to make to with home made fireworks. When I say home made fireworks I am not really talking about anything flash, in fact it was very basic and I’m sure you would easily be able to find the necessary items in any good supermarket, or even in some not so good ones. What you need is a metal coat hanger, some string, some steel wool and a flame, we found a candle worked well. Now tie the string on to the coat hanger so that it is at a length that you can swing around without it hitting the ground. Now wrap some of the steel wool around the coat hanger, make sure the wool is not too tight as you want the air to be able to get in when it is swinging around. Once it is securely fastened on to the coat hanger light the steel wool with a candle. Once it is sufficiently alight started swinging it around in a circular fashion as fast as you can. And that’s all there is to it. If you want to take photos of this, I suggest not using the flash, and use a relatively slow shutter speed, that way the photos show the fireworks really well. Actually you may find that looking at the photos is more spectacular than looking at the real thing.

Just to give you an idea of what it was like, here are a few photos. I can’t take credit for these ones, my photos were all stolen along with my laptop.

Lighting the steel wool

I am swinging this one. Note the fine swinging form displayed.

Warning: It is not advisable for small children to attempt this, the steel wool gets very hot. Do not stand beside anyone who is swinging the fireworks, you will get covered in sparks if you do. Ensure you have a plan for what to do in case a fire breaks out, we decided to do the fireworks outside the fire-station just in case.

This was going to be about entertainment but...

Well I had planned to write today about how people here in Ukarumpa keep themselves entertained. I had some photos all ready to post about the homemade fireworks that we had much fun with one night last week. However a certain unexpected event last night means I can no longer post those pictures.

Yesterday after work I moved my stuff from the house I had been staying in, to the new house I am moving in to. I am moving in with 2 other single guys who I have been getting on pretty well with. So anyway, I moved my stuff in and then went out for dinner. It was hamburger night at the teen centre where a bunch of school students sell hamburgers to the rest of the community, quite an event for a town with no regular restaurants. After dinner I went to another friend's house to play Settlers, a board game that is rather popular here. Unfortunately this time I didn't win the game, but it was fun never the less.

On returning home at around 10pm we found that some thieves had broken in through the back door and stolen all of our laptops and cameras, hence my inability to post the previously mentioned photos. So within 4 hours of moving in to my new place, I had been burgled, that is just great.

Hopefully some of the other people at the fireworks night will have some photos I can copy so keep an eye out over the next few days and maybe there will be a couple of pictures.

Madang photos

I have had a request for photos of last weeks Madang trip, so to keep my
readers happy I present Madang in colour.

There were lots of bats in Madang.

The little boys at the village we went to were very good tree climbers. They would go up to get some 'buai', a little nut thingy that lots of people chew to get a bit of a buzz. They then spit it out resulting in red stains all over the ground. Oh and their teeth and mouths are all red. Very attractive.

We saw a pet cassowary on the way home. It is just a baby one.

The store at the village we went to. There wasn't much for sale in the store.

The back of the PMV for the last little trip from Kainantu back to Ukarumpa (only about 10 minutes). It was much more crowded than it appears in the photo.

One of the lovely snorkeling spots. This is where I had my T=bone steak.

The other snorkeling spot, Rempi. Very nice little spot.

This tree was pretty cool. It was huge with a lot of different trunks all part of the same tree. Good for swinging on.

Madang

I have now been here in PNG for around 5 weeks, so I figured it was about time I had another holiday. Well actually a bunch of others were heading to Madang for a 6 days and asked if I would like to come along. There were 8 of us going, so the most economical way for us to go was to catch a PMV from Ukarumpa. The nice driver picked us up bright and early at 7am on Wednesday and we set off. I was told by a national chap that it takes 3 - 4 hours depending on the driver. I now am wondering whether that chap actually had a watch, because there is no way you could drive there in 3 hours, I think we took at least 5 hours. Thankfully it was a very boring trip, no accidents, no armed holdups, not even anyone blocking the road armed with shovels asking for money.

Madang is on the coast of PNG and has some very nice snorkeling and diving spots and a great supply of coconuts, mangoes and papaya, yummy. On the afternoon that we arrived we took a short trip in to town to go to the market and to the supermarket to get most of the ingredients for the various meals we were planning to cook over the week. There were 4 supermarkets that we went to over the week and they were pretty good by PNG standards. I picked up a few ingredients that I can't find or are expensive in Ukarumpa, yay I can start cooking with olive oil again.

On Thursday we went second hand clothes shopping in the morning, not really my cup of tea, although I was surprised at the quality of some of the clothes available. Unfortunately nothing caught my fancy so I didn't buy anything. After a while I grew a little bored so went for a walk to take some photos of the town. I found a bunch of big bats hanging in a tree, they are not the prettiest of creatures.

In the afternoon we went snorkeling and I am happy to report that I did indeed find Nemo. He was darting in and out of an anemone. We also saw a bunch of other colourful fish and even a sea snake, right next to the spot I had been standing a few minutes earlier.

We then all went out to the golf club for dinner, a lovely Chinese restaurant, very tasty. We were going to have ice-cream but they had run out and they apparently didn't have anything else available for dessert.

On Friday we went to visit the village that Tiffany lived in for 5 weeks during her POC orientation course in January. They were very nice people and extremely generous. They didn't know we were coming, and yet still they fed us all a big lunch including a chicken and various root vegetables. One man was particularly talkative and liked to tell stories. I am not exactly sure what the moral of most of the stories were, but the theme that seemed to reoccur time and time again is that if you are going in a boat, don't let any cassowary birds in with you, they are not to be trusted. In one story it pushed a wallaby in to the water and then ate a turtle, very odd stories indeed.

On Saturday we went up to visit the people currently on the POC course. The course runs for either 6 weeks or 15 weeks, depending on the kind of work you will be doing in PNG. During the weekends they all have to cook for themselves on outdoor fires, so that they can learn how to cook while in a village. Ron and I were on cooking lunch that day, so we made tortillas on Friday night and then cooked up some mince and made salsa and guacamole. It was jolly tasty and everyone seemed to appreciate it. Home made tortillas are much nicer in my opinion to the store bought variety and they really are not that hard to make.

On Sunday we went to a local church in the morning, we turned up a little late, but still managed to catch the last 3 1/2 hours or so. It was mostly in English so at least I could follow what was going on. In the afternoon we went to another snorkeling spot, one that had a restaurant too. So after a nice steak lunch I went and had a snorkel for a while. I saw more clown fish and a few other of the finding Nemo cast. The water was not as clear as the first spot, but there were bigger fish around so it was nice to see a bit of variety. In the evening a few of us went out for dinner, the last opportunity I will have for a while to eat out. I decided to see whether they could top the steak I had for lunch, and what do you know they could. It was very tasty although the mushroom and red wine sauce seemed to be missing the red wine. The specials board said there were strawberries and ice-cream for dessert, but it turned out that there were none left. So we inquired about the cheese-cake of the day, "Sorry no cheese-cake today". There were only 2 more items on the dessert menu, ice-cream and pie of the day. Ah yes a nice pie, so what was the pie of the day? Well at first we were told peach pie. Then after we finished our main course it had changed to apple pie with strawberry ice-cream, apparently there was no vanilla. So 3 of us ordered the apple pie with strawberry ice-cream. What we actually got was what we are assumed to be a peach pie, and vanilla ice-cream. The steak was significantly better than the pie was.

This morning (Monday) we left the SIL guest house at 7:15 and were dropped off in town to catch a PMV back to Ukarumpa. With 8 of us we figured it couldn't take too long to fill a PMV (they don't leave until they are crammed full of people). If any of you have played Pitt and were good at it, then you may want to consider moving to PNG and becoming a 'boss man', this is the guy who calls out of the window trying to attract more passengers. It seems that the number of available seats was a pretty flexible number. The boss man started off yelling "4 pela Goroka, 4 pela Goroka" (not too sure on the spelling sorry), meaning room for 4 more passengers going to Goroka. When he realised that the 8 of us who were already in the van were only going as far as Kainantu the call changed to "4 pela Kainantu, 4 pela Kainantu". Eventually 2 more passengers were found and they jumped in. The call then changed to "3 pela Kainantu". Now it has been a while since I was at school, but last time I checked 4 - 2 = 2 not 3. Hmm, I wonder where the 3rd person will sit. We drove around town for a while more calling for 3 people sometimes and 2 people other times, possibly depending on how many people we were passing at the time. Then one of the passengers that was in the van decided to get out, right back were he got in. I guess he wanted a break from the sun or something. Finally after much futile calling and driving all around Madang centre, we took off, with 1 spare seat. The trip back was equally as uneventful as the trip to Madang and I am now back safe and sound in Ukarumpa.

Sigri Coffee

One of the highlights of my recent trip to CLTC was the tour of the
Sigri Coffee processing plant. Sigri coffee is the main PNG coffee
that is imported in to New Zealand, and a significant part of most of
the espresso blends I roast. The coffee is well known for it's
acidity particularly if only roasted to a relatively light roast.
This acidity does not suit my palate on it's own, so as a single
origin bean it is not so good, but in a blend it really adds a lot.

The Sigri processing plant is right next door to CLTC and uncle Ross
has a good relationship going with the manager guy there, so we were
able to go there on Saturday afternoon for a coffee cupping session
and a tour of the plant.

First off the coffee cherries get delivered on the back of pickup
trucks or what ever vehicle the growers may have available. Ideally
the cherries would all be red, however this is not always the case as
the pickers get kind of lazy and throw in a bunch of unripe green
cherries too. This is particularly true at the beginning and end of
the season when there are less ripe cherries around.

The cherries are dumped in to a big bin kind of thing and from there
they go through a machine that squeezes the bean out of the cherry.
At this stage the bean is covered in a slimy mucilage that is kind of
sweet.

In PNG most coffee is wet processed, this means that the mucilage is
removed before the bean is dried. In some other coffee growing
countries the beans are dry processed so the beans are just set out
to dry at this stage. For wet processing the beans are put in big
vats and soaked in water for a day before being moved to the next vat
the next day and yet another vat the next day. The number of vats
varies from place to place, but at Sigri they have 3 vats.

After that they are laid out to dry, this is sometimes done on tables
to let air circulate around the beans a bit more, or other times they
are dried on a concrete pad. After the beans are dried (it takes about 7
days I think) they are called parchment, the bean itself is
covered in a layer of silvery coloured stuff that should be removed
prior to roasting.

There can be a variance in the colour of the bean at this stage, as
some were riper than others when they were picked. Ideally they
should be a uniform colour, they fetch a better price that way. So
what they do is put them in some great big conditioning vats. Air is
pumped down to the bottom of the vat then blows back up through the
beans. They are kept in these vats for something like 25 days and
when they come out they are much more uniform in colour, a nice green/
blue colour.

At this stage the beans are sent through a machine that removes all
the sticks and stones that may have made it in to the beans. I can't
remember exactly how that machine worked but it was kind of cool.

Next up they need to remove the parchment from the beans. There are
2 machines that they use to do this, the first one kind of squeezes
the beans to try and get the bean out of the parchment. The second
machine polishes the beans, not too much, you don't want the beans to
be shiny, just enough to clean them up a bit. After they have gone
through those 2 machines they are looking pretty good and are ready
to be sorted and bagged.

The beans are sorted by size, so there are a series of trays with
different sized holes in them and the beans fall through. To stop
the beans from blocking up the holes there are a bunch of balls that
knock any stuck beans back out of the holes. The largest beans are
called AA, followed by A, B, C, maybe D I forget, possibly even some
other low grades, and peaberry. The peaberry are the most rare, they
account for only about 6% or 7% of the crop and are round in shape.
Most coffee cherries have 2 beans, but occasionally they only have 1,
that is when you get the peaberry beans. Peaberry and AA generally
will fetch the best price, and A and B are also reasonably good. In
New Zealand we usually get A and B grades from Sigri.

Once they are sorted in to their sizes there are 2 different ways of
sorting out the good from the bad beans. The first way is usually
used for the cheaper grades like C and D. The beans are put in to
this machine that blows are up from the bottom. The heavier beans
are the better ones and they fall down as the air is not strong
enough to blow them up. They fall in to a sack on the left of the
machine. The lighter beans bounce of the top and are directed to the
right where another jet of stream at a slightly lesser pressure again
blows the lighter beans up and the heavier beans fall in to another
sack. The beans that are still light enough are directed in to a
third sack that is sold to places like Nescafe for their awful
instant coffee stuff.

The better grades of bean are sorted on a rack that vibrates. The
rack is on a slight angle so the heavier beans gradually move to the
one side and the lighter beans to the other.

Once the beans have been sorted they can either be hand sorted to
remove any beans that are black or beans that are deformed, or for
the better grades they are sorted by the coolest machine that they
had there. This machine detected colour differences and when it saw
a black bean it shot a jet of compressed air at the bean, sending it
in to another sack. The beans that made it through the first pass of
this machine were then processed again at a different speed to get
any remaining ones out. Once again the reject beans were bagged up
and sold to Nescafe. After that the beans are all sorted by hand,
mainly to remove any deformed beans and also to catch any black beans
that may have made it through the last step.

If after hand sorting the beans are not up to scratch then they are
resorted by hand again, what a job.

After our tour we went in to the coffee cupping room and sampled 8
different beans. The first 4 had not been processed yet and still
had the parchment on when they were roasted. They all tasted pretty
similar to me, and none of them were all that memorable. Then we had
samples of AA, A, B and Peaberry that had just been processed. The
AA and peaberry were quite different to the A and B beans, they had
noticeably more acidity in them. I actually preferred the A grade
bean, to me it was a bit better balanced so more pleasant by itself
than the other AA and peaberry. In a blend however I think the AA
and peaberry may have more to contribute.

If you have read this far through this posting then I congratulate
you, a lot of people I am sure have stopped long before they get this
far.

Back safe and sound

You can all sleep easy again. I have arrived back in Ukarumpa safe and sound. The trip back was uneventful, the only stops were planned stops to deliver chickens and eggs.

I have a good report on my tour of a coffee processing plant that I will write about later in the week. It was really interesting. I don't have time to write about it at the moment so you will all just have to wait patiently.

Trip to CLTC

Well I thought I would take this opportunity to let you all know what travel is like here in PNG, land of the unexpected.

Earlier in the week I received a phone call from Aunty Alison who lives at CLTC (Christian Leaders Training College), around 7 hours drive from Ukarumpa. A van was coming through from Lae on the way back to CLTC on Friday that I could grab a ride on, so it seemed like a perfect opportunity to see where she lives and see a bit more of PNG.

The van was leaving Lae at around 4am and reached Ukarumpa just before 8am, so I had to leave work early. There were 5 of us in the van, myself, Uncle Ross, another kiwi named Laurie, the driver Thomas and a lady who works in the office at CLTC named Nancy. We took off and all was going well. We drove through Kainantu (not far from Ukarumpa) taking the same route I went on last weekend for the bible dedication.

As we approached the crest of a hill all of a sudden 4 men armed with home made rifles and 2 men with bush knives forced us to stop. This was a new experience to me. It would be exceptionally rare to be held up at gunpoint in New Zealand, and in my year in Canada not once did anything like this happen. So I was a little unsure what they may do. I figured they were probably after money, and I was starting to wish that I had stored some of my money in my shoe like Jonathan has been doing in the Philippines. I thought it would probably be too late to try transferring it at that point so I just sat there in the van and waited to see what would happen. One of the men with a bush knife approached the drivers door and hit it with his knife, not particularly hard, but enough to give the impression that he wanted the driver to wind down the window I guess. The driver had some lunch money stored in the ash tray and was pretty quick to hand that over, I think it was 18 kina (around NZ $9) and amazingly after receiving that money the gunmen took off. So we were let off very lightly and continued on our way, all be it a little shaken from our experience. Apparently the driver had been held up before and he and his son were driven to a village where the vehicle was unloaded and they were stripped naked before being allowed to take the van and leave. I didn't hear about that until later, so I didn't realize at the time just how lightly we had been let off.

A few hours later as we were driving along up a steep mountain pass, we came across a group of people looking over the edge of the road, where there was a 300 metre or so drop. Apparently a bus (one of the PMVs that I was intending on returning to Ukarumpa in) had not negotiated the corner successfully and had flown off the edge. Reports from people at the scene were that they had removed 15 bodies so far, and were still trying to cut others out of the wreckage.

Once again we continued on our journey, until we came across two men armed with shovels who were blocking the road. Apparently they had been filling in a few potholes and then demanding money from travellers in return. Not wanting to be harmed with the shovel, I quickly removed a 2 kina note from my shoe and handed it to the driver who passed it out the window. That seemed to satisfy them and we were allowed to continue yet again.

So we continued yet again until we came across a big truck trailer unit that was blocking half the road. A bunch of people were blocking the other half of the road asking for money. These people didn't even have any shovels, so they were a little more negotiable on price. They wanted 5 kina, instead Laurie told them off in the name of Jesus, and they took that as a fair payment and let us pass.

And that was the last stopage on the journey. Last night I heard that there was a possibility of catching a flight from Hagen to Ukarumpa, Hagen is about 1 hour or so from CLTC. So I left bright and early this morning in a van fill of day old chickens. After waiting at the airport for about an hour I finally found out that there were no flights going to Ukarumpa today so I was out of luck. Instead I spent a rather interesting day delivering chickens and driving around Hagen (I wasn't driving, I was just a passenger). I am heading back to Ukarumpa at 4am Wednesday in the CLTC egg delivery truck. Hopefully we will be too early for the rascalls and we will have a less eventful journey this time.

Sorry I didn't have the prescence of mind to grab my camera and take photos of the gunmen, you will just have to take my word for it that they looked pretty mean.

The Bible Dedication

OK so I am submitting this blog via email, so if the formatting is
kind of odd then that is likely to be the reason.

Right, well on Saturday I went on my first trip outside of the
Ukarumpa mission centre. I was going with a bunch of other people
from Ukarumpa to a bible dedication a couple of hours drive away.
When I say a couple of hours drive away you must realize that I am
talking about a couple of hours on PNG roads away, so it wasn't actually all that far, maybe 100Km or so.

Anyhoo, we all met at 7:30 am and headed out. After about 5 minutes
we had to stop because the radiator hose on the vehicle I was
travelling in blew off. Like all good blokes we all got out and
looked under the hood to see what the problem was. Being the
incredibly handy guy that I am in all situations mechanical, I
decided the most useful role I could play would be the photographer.
Some of the others were more mechanically inclined and quickly found
that the radiator hose was no longer attached and then proceeded to
reattach it making good use of some electrical tape that of course
they had in the back of the vehicle. So after 10 minutes we were
back under way with our patched up radiator hose. Thankfully there were no more car troubles for the rest of the trip.

I recall while in Vancouver complaining a little about the state of
some of the roads and thinking there were quite a few potholes
around. I now look back on those roads and have a good old chuckle
as they were many times better than the roads over here. There were
huge potholes all over the place,

some of them particularly difficult to see amongst the shadows on the road. We were in a pretty decent size 4x4 and still there were several times that I was sure we were
going to do some serious damage to the axle or blow out a tyre. At
one point the road looked barely passable and yet the 2 others that
were with me said that there had been significant improvements on
that part of the road in the last 3 weeks, apparently the road bore
more resemblance to a lake 3 weeks earlier.

Well enough about the roads, I am sure you all want to hear about the
bible dedication. When a new translation of a bible is completed and
printed the tribe who are benefactors of the new translation hold a
bible dedication. I have been told that they vary quite a bit from
tribe to tribe, some of them being pretty solemn and others having
more of a celebratory mood. This one was leaning towards the
celebratory side of things thankfully. People had walked to the
meeting spot from miles around, and there was much singing going on
as we drove along the road.

People were clearly very happy. A number of people were dressed in traditional tribal attire, they generally don't wear this any more but have adopted a more western
style of clothing. When everyone had arrived the ceremony got
underway. The 'White Skins' as we are called were invited to sit
under a blue tarpaulin to the right of the stage, however we managed
to avoid this by moving quickly to a grass bank to the side and
making ourselves comfortable there.

Once the seating arrangements were sorted out there was a drama,
re=enacting the arrival of the white skin missionaries, it was
narrated in the local language so I had to do my best to follow what
was going on by looking. I couldn't really see very well from where
I was so I went for a bit of a walk around the area to see what else
was photo-worthy. There were lots of decorations around, often
comprising of large bunches of bananas with some hibiscus flowers on
them, or in other cases a cabbage hanging on a wire. I guess they
made use of what they had available.

After the drama the speeches began, and they continued for quite some
time. Every now and then I picked up a word or 2 and Steve Curry (my
manager) did a good job of translating what he picked up. It turns
out that the original translation work was begun in 1965. The
translation being dedicated was a revision of the old translation as
the language had changed quite a bit in the last 40 years.

After the speeches we were invited to have lunch so we accepted the
kind offer and joined the other white skins in a nearby classroom for
a lunch of potato, kau-kau, chicken, coleslaw, lettuce, pawpaw and
pineapple. Not bad although the chicken could have done with a
little seasoning.

Food, lodgings and coffee

As those of you who have been regular readers over the last year may remember, while I was in Vancouver I made regular trips to the public market at Granville Island where I could find all manner of fresh fruit and veggies and a wide variety of fish and meat, not to mention the vast array of gourmet cheeses. Add to that the various herbs and grains etc and pretty much 95% of my ingredients could all be found in the often very busy market.


Well the morning market at Ukarumpa is kind of like that except there are only fruit and veggies, and not so many of them. The morning market happens 3 times a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Calling it the morning market in my opinion is not the most appropriate name for it, I prefer to think of it as the pre-morning market. It kicks off at 6:30 and is all over by 8:00, and the later you go the more meager the selection is. On the 3 occasions that I have made it to the market so far I have arrived at around 7:00 and there has been quite a good variety of produce for sale. There are pineapple, bananas, strawberries, some other berry looking things, bell peppers (capsicums), potatoes, sweet potatoes, broccoli, beans, lettuce, vanilla beans, and the list could go on. The prices are often ridiculously cheap, yesterday I managed to score a bunch of bananas for around US $0.50 and they have been pretty tasty so far. Then there were the vanilla beans, 4 for US$0.30, not bad at all considering I spent around $9 for 2 of them in New Zealand last month. Instead of listing all of the items and their prices I will include a picture, everything in that picture was purchased for about US$3.00, not bad at all. On my first trip to the market I was looking for garlic, and was rather surprised when someone pointed it out at one of the tables. It was tiny, the whole bulb was about the size of a regular single clove. I bought some and used it a few times, I found it ridiculously painful to work with. Each clove was not much larger than a grain of rice once it was peeled. I ended up buying a jar of minced garlic from the store, much easier to work with.



Well enough about food for now, a number of people have expressed an interest in what my living arrangements are like. They are pretty nice. I have hot water available thanks to the solar panels on the roof, so I can still enjoy hot showers. The house is a duplex, with the other half of the house currently unoccupied. My half is the half on the right in the photo. Yesterday my flatmate arrived, his name is Ron I think. He is from Canada, Labrador I believe. His accent is quite different to the few Canadians I met in Vancouver, but I can normally understand him alright. He is a physio and is here for 6 weeks before heading to New Zealand for a couple of weeks. He is then going to Singapore or Taiwan, I forget, for a wedding, before eventually heading back to Canada for his own wedding in December. Any way back to the house, um, it has wooden floors, white walls and white ceilings. There is a kitchen with a rather scary gas oven, I am yet to figure out how to turn the oven on, some other gas ovens I have seen around Ukarumpa have to be started by using a long match. There is a starter button on the oven, but as yet pressing it has not achieved anything and the smell of gas filling the kitchen has prompted me to turn the gas off again before a random spark leaves me without any eyebrows. The lounge has a rather uncomfortable couch and 2 equally uncomfortable armchairs. There is also a table with 4 chairs. My bedroom has a double bed, a small desk with chair and an empty bookcase. If anyone has any further questions regarding the house feel free to leave a question, or if you prefer your questions to be private then send me an email.


A few people have also asked what the coffee situation is like here. Well, for the first few days it was particularly tough as I had no way of making any coffee. However someone I had lunch with on Saturday came to my rescue and found a spare french press that I can borrow for the time I am here. That alleviated the problem to some extent, now the only problem is I have no coffee grinder. I will have to keep a lookout for a cheap grinder somewhere, maybe the store will have one soon (it is pretty variable what the store actually has in stock). Anyway, I was given a bag of pre-ground coffee, PNG Blue Mountain. The beans taste kind of odd, I haven't quite been able to figure out exactly what it is that was odd about it that is odd, they are not really nasty tasting, just odd. Considering they were roasted in April I would have to say they are not too bad, and they may have actually been quite nice when they were fresh. There is a coffee research centre just outside of the village, I passed it on my way here from the airstrip, so I will have to pay a visit there some time.


There seems to be an abundance of very small wildlife around my house, particularly wildlife of the type that like to spin webs. I happened to look a little closer at one the other day and noticed that it had what looks like a big shell on it's back. I have since seen a few more of these around the exterior of the house, they look kind of cool so I took a photo.

Settling in time

Well for those of you who I haven't contacted yet, which would be pretty much everyone except Mum and Dad, I have safely arrived in Ukarumpa, Papua New Guinea.

I think I have now traveled in the smallest plane I will ever travel in, a Cessna 206, maximum capacity 5 passengers. I was in the co-pilot seat so had a wonderful view of the clouds and occasional river and rolling hills that make up the PNG eastern highlands. I had to be careful not to stretch my legs too straight as there were some foot pedals down there and I didn't really want to send the plane in an uncontrollable spin or anything. The flight was around 1 3/4 hours and the plane actually felt reasonably safe, it didn't bounce around too much.

On arriving in Ukarumpa I was met at the airstrip by my department bosses and Tony and Martha Hinton, the fellowship family that was assigned to show me around. Tony is a fellow kiwi although he has spent about 10 years in the UK and another 10 years in the US so his accent is a little confused at times.

There is a sign up sheet in the post office here with all the new people on it, where people sign up to have the newbies over for dinner or lunch. So far I have been out for dinner 3 times and lunch 4 times, so I am getting to know people pretty quickly. There are a bunch of young people here and the ones I have met so far have been great fun to be around and very welcoming.

On Saturday night there was a contemporary worship time with a really good worship band playing a good mix of songs. I would have to say it was one of the best worship bands I have seen. The music on Sunday morning was a little less to my liking, although they say if you don't like the style of service here, come back next week because it will be totally different, so I will have to see what it is like next week. I had a chat with one of the worship leaders and he sounded keen to get me involved in his team. There are so many good musicians over here, I guess I won't be playing quite as often as I was in Vancouver.

I haven't gone for a walk with my camera yet so don't have many photos yet, and the ones I do have are still on my camera so they will have to wait for the next posting. I was a little concerned for a while that I wouldn't be able to post pictures on my blog as I have to pay 30 cents per Mb for web usage. Fortunately that charge is only for incoming traffic, so I can post pictures for free! I will have to limit my web browsing though so probably won't be playing any of Dan's I hate Monday games for a while.

And that's all I have to say today. Check back in a few days and I may have more to say.

Final post from NZ

Well my month home in Auckland has just flown by and it is now only 12 1/2 hours until I depart to on my next great adventure.

In my time back home I have once again come to realise how good my espresso machine is. I had actually gotten used to not having fantastic coffee at home while living in Vancouver and had forgotten how good it was to wake up and be able to start the day off with a perfect latte or espresso. It will be missed over the next 5 months for sure.

It has also been nice being able to play a few rounds of golf over the last month, even if I got absolutely drenched in the process. I was certainly a bit rusty after not playing since October but in the last game I was starting to be a bit happier with the way I was hitting the ball, despite the somewhat unimpressive scorecard. It has been great being able to finally use my 'new' driver on a course at last, surprisingly it didn't totally fix my slice, so perhaps there is a flaw in my swing.

Vacation montage

Well I have been very slack writing about my vacation and quite frankly am lacking the inspiration right now to write a detailed commentary on all I did and saw, so instead I will put together a bit of a photo montage of the last month or so.

Whistler
It was kind of cloudy up the mountains so we just hired some bikes to ride around the valley. There are some really nice lakes that are pretty close to the village. Didn't get a chance to do any downhill riding, Mum and Dad didn't seem to keen.


Victoria
Apparently we were really lucky to see so many orcas resting. And as you can tell we got really close to the whales to. Splendid.
The deer in somebodies garden was pretty cool.





Salt Spring Island
Beautiful place, we stayed in a really nice little log cabin beside a lake. Highlight of Salt Spring Island was visiting the cheese shop, very yummy goats cheeses. The bread shop had some really nice bread too.



Las Vegas
We arrived kind of late at night so all the rooms that we had booked were taken, so we got an upgrade to a suite, a 2 level room complete with a sauna shower and jacuzzi. Unfortunately it also only came with 1 bed so I had to sleep on a roll-away. Didn't really do much in Vegas other than sleep and eat.


Zion National Park



Bryce Canyon
Well known for it's hoodoos, indeed they were the best hoodoos I have ever seen.




Grand Canyon
The grand canyon is huge, I had no idea it was that big. It is pretty hard to capture the scale of it in a photograph, I kind of failed in that regard but I got a photo of a bee and a squirrel!








Yosemite National Park
My favourite of all the places we visited. I would love to go back there in winter time, maybe next year.




San Francisco
Didn't really get any photos worth posting here. We went on a tour to the golden gate bridge but it didn't stop on the side of the bridge I wanted a photo from, a little disappointing.