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.