Papua at last !
20:00hrs Thursday 17 March 2007
The team (Doug, Omar, Peter, Takaro and Victor) are at last in Papua ! It has been three flights from Bali. The first two flights took us past Biak in Suluwesi and then to Makassar by 737.
The head-rests on all pretty much all commercial aircraft have little paper serviettes to protect the seat from hair grease. These get their name from Makassar, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimacassar> this was more or less the only thing I knew about Makassar other than that the sea food should be good. The inhabitants. of this this entire region are ethnically related to the Malay, who being a sea-faring people called themselves Orang Laut; Orang = man, Laut = sea. So fish is always going to be high on the list of culinary delights here.
We had a 5 hour stop on the island, and wandered into town look for a highly recommended fish restaurant. The search was well worth it, if you ever find yourself in Makassar go look for Lae-Lae restaurant, a 5 minute walk from the main port. After feasting on grilled squid and giant prawns with rice we waddled off to meet our flgiht to Papua.
At the airport Peter could not find his boarding pass , provoking near panick on the part of the Europeans and a practised calm from our agent, Leo, who found Peter's name on the flight list and convinced the ground staff he was the same passenger. Predictably, the boarding pass re-emerged from the bottom of his ruck sack on landing.
The third leg of the journey was by Twin Otter, perfect not only for ski landings near Vinson but also island hopping the Indonesian archipelago. From the air the smaller islands were reconizable from the map; fringed with tourquoise lagoons, sandy beaches and ringed with surf.
We landed on the tiny island of Yapen to deposit one passenger and pick up two, but with only 20 places, Air Garuda had managed to over-book the craft. This took an hour to sort out with a growing crowd of interested rice farmers and fishwives offering their considered opinions. My sugestion to unload the only passenger with no boarding pass was met by firm resistance on his part. It began to rain and part of the crowd hid from the down-pour under the wing. The rest dispersed to their porches.
I was expecting the pilot to ask a random passenger to step outside when he booted up the engines again, the little craft hopped acouple of times down the short run way and soon the kampongs and beaches shrank into the picture postcard view of tropical islands that belie the heat and humidy down there.
The Papuan weather has already been true to predicted form, a warm drizzling shower greeted us as we stepped off the Twin Otter. It has been raining ever since. Tomorrow we continue our journey by air to the village of Sugapa. After that come the jungles, the mud, the biting things and the leeches. So much to look forward to.