Papua New Guinea was easily the most pain-in-the-neck place to plan. I bought a ticket to the capital, Port Moresby, before doing any actual research. Turns out, Papua New Guinea is not exactly a backpacker location; in fact, it’s not really that much of a tourist location at all. The is a large expat community living there, mostly extracting minerals and gas, but Port Moresby is so riddle with crime that they all live in compounds, have drivers, and don’t leave their compounds at night. I looked into some tour options, which were all wildly expensive, tours for about $5,000. I spent ages trying to plan everything, even looking into contacting locals directly, whose contact information I got from travel forums, to stay with, live with their families, and eat the same food for a few days and pay them directly. In one instance, a man was highly recommended on a few different travel forums. When I contacted him to stay at his home, in a small village with no roads (you have to canoe to his home), no running water, and no electricity, he tried to charge me $3,600 for four nights. WHAT!?!?!? I was able to bring his price down significantly, but opted out of staying with him in the end, just because he was so clearly willing to swindle me in the first place. Anyway, I have no idea how, but I found a man from the US who helped me arrange and book the entire trip. We would be there for nine days and eight nights. There were tons of things that I wanted to see, but was eventually talked out by the man that helped me, because of timing restrictions. The country is exceedingly difficult to move around within. Firstly, you can only really travel from town to town via airplane, because there are no roads connecting them, and secondly you can’t just hop around from town to town on planes, even if you tried. Most of the locations only receive flights from the capital, Port Moresby, so you have to waste an entire day flying from whatever destination back to Port Moresby and then to the next location. Ug, frustrating!! The first and last nights I had to stay in Port Moresby, but there was zero in the way of hostels and no one was doing Air B&B, because it was close to Christmas, so my only option seemed to be hotels. I got really lucky for this first night and was able to find a Couchsurfer to stay with, but the last night I was out of luck and had to book a hotel for $384 Kina, which is $145 US dollars. You might not think $145 is a lot to pay for a night in a hotel, but a) hostels average about $10-25, and b) this hotel was NOT a luxury hotel. It was actually the cheapest accommodation in Port Moresby. I was in the end, able to plan the entire trip from my homestay in Italy and once it was all booked, I threw my hands up in defeat or victory, I couldn’t quite tell, and committed to not thinking about how much I had just spent. Anyway, on to the actual trip!
Leaving Vanuatu, I got on the plane to Brisbane and had an overnight eight hour layover. Because of the long layover, I had to actually pick my bag up from customs, and find a nice soft looking sofa in the departure terminal where I could cozy up with my eye mask and ear plugs. It was no Auckland New Zealand International Terminal with plush couches and unattended Duty Free, but I was still able to get a decent night of sleep. The next morning, I hopped on the flight to Port Moresby. I can’t exactly recall, but I seem to remember that I had the treasured window seat with two empty seats next to me! Jackpot! The flight landed with no issues and I started waiting in the exit line, and happened to start a quick chat with a man and his wife, who were expats working in Port Moresby, also exiting the plane. The asked about my plans in Papua New Guinea, and then told about how dangerous the city was, not to take a cab from the airport, not to walk around at all in the city etc. Granted, this information is pretty much what I had read and heard from others, but I find that people often blow third world countries out of proportion and travel more defensively and are easily scared; I did not expect to hear the same advice from people that lived there. As I exited and started the wait in customs, an Australian expat working there as well started to chat with me and asked “you here on vacation?”, when I said yes, his exact response was “why? WHY?”. Oh Jesus. Needless to say, I was a bit on edge as I walked out of the airport, but I just held my head high, and walked as if I knew where I was going. I had arranged for the man with whom I was Couchsurfing to pick me up at the airport, but didn’t exactly know what he looked like or what type of car he owned. After a few seconds in the hot, sunny air, trying to squeeze through the rows of people awaiting other arrivals, I heard my name, and turned around to see a man staring right at me and say my name again. It was my Couchsurfing host, Aisa! Thank God. He escorted me to his nice car, we piled in and he drove to his house. Along to way, I asked him about some of the things I had heard in regards to dangers and precautions in Port Moresby, all of which he confirmed. He reported that he had almost been assaulted while driving his car. He had lived there for a bit under a year with his wife and son, they were all Pakistani by the way, and that none of them liked living there. His son did go to school with other expat kids, but the security measures they had to take were through the roof. He talked about living in the compound, and the one place to socialize with other people, the Yacht Club. Expats were not allowed to even go to the beach where the locals frequented for fear of both petty crime and violent crime. Apparently, there is just basically zero regulation and law enforcement, so there are no repercussions for crime. He discussed the government’s influence there, which I always find interesting. He said the odd thing about Papua New Guinea, is that there is a lot of money floating around, due to the mining and mineral exportation by all these foreign companies. However, unlike most corrupt governments, which will AT LEAST provide nice things for “their own”, like schools, clubs, sports, nice neighborhoods etc, they did none of that in Port Moresby. According to him, all the “elite”, wealthy families sent the kids to school in Australia, and themselves spent much time out of the country. He also reported the government’s unwillingness to build roads between locations outside of the Capital and infrastructure for the people to prosper. He told us about the “Rascals”, which is the name for the gang that runs the city, and how commonplace it is to have at least one family member in the gang.
We arrived at his compound, and his house, which was amazing. It was a modern two story condo, built on the side of a hill, with a fantastic view of the harbor with all the sailboats in the distance, and the city layout. There were floor to ceiling windows along the side of the house. The place was big, clean, and homey. We settled in, and he made us lunch, after which, we watched The Interview, and then he drove us over to the Yacht club for sunset and a few beers. That was literally the only thing to do around the city; he wouldn’t have even been able to take us on a driving tour of the city, because anything off the main roads was dangerous. After a bit of chatter, we headed back to his house for a really good traditional Pakistani dinner and a kung fu movie, before calling it a night. We had to wake up quite early in the morning for an 8am flight; despite what you think though, we had to show up about two hours before the flight actually left, because often they depart early without actually informing any of the passengers…yea. Our host though was SO gracious, he offered to wake up early too and drive us back to the airport, probably about 12 hours after he picked us up. Wow, nice guy. My first and only (thus far) Couchsurfing experience was definitely positive! Off to start the (hopefully) safe and adventurous part of Papua New Guinea at the Tufi Dive Resort!
