The South Pacific is a pretty slow paced place; a place where you don’t sweat the small stuff (or even moderately sized stuff), but just sit back, relax and let things roll…. Which anyone who knows me will know is something I am just pathologically incapable of. I LIKE to sweat the small stuff; I find it makes the small stuff far less likely, in a few days’ time, to grow into medium sized, large or even frankly inconceivably enormous stuff that then turns round and bites you in the ass. With its inconceivably enormous teeth. Painfully.

So when we decided to embark on a two day volcano climb on Ambrym, our negotiation stance was clear. James did the talking (people here don’t really deal with women much), whilst I back-seat drove with true micro-management flare. James established that yes, we could do the trek. I pushed for details. Yes, there would be a high quality and reliable tent. Yes, we’d have sleeping bags. There would – of course! – be ample numbers of sleeping mats to sleep on. Yes, there was a plentiful water supply on the mountain. Et cetera. And yes, I was getting laughed at. We’re in the South Pacific, after all. These things get taken care of if you just relax and let them…

So the four of us (James, myself and Sergi and Miriam, 2 Spanish travelers who were also staying at Chief Sekor’s) felt quietly confident as we set off on our way. We were looking after our own food, with Sergi and Miriam kindly sharing with us some canned tuna and pate they’d brought onto the island, and the sure knowledge that we’d be able to pick up some wheels of bread to see us through the trip…. Only the baker hadn’t baked that morning, so no bread. No drama, there’d be some in the next village. Hmmm, although actually the baker here had gone fishing, so again no bread. Still, we’d get some in Ranvetlam, where we’d also be picking up our gear….. Ummm, about that gear. You know we promised sleeping bags? Well, we don’t actually have any. Is that ok? As long as we have sleeping mats? Sure. OK, and what if we don’t actually have sleeping mats either. Well, we have 2 paper thin ancient sleepmat remnants plus an old mattress you can have. Should be fine for the four of you, right? Well, yes, should be fine. After all, we’ll have plenty of food and water. Best go get that bread….. Bread? Oh, it’s just that the baker here is guiding another group on the mountain, so there is no bread. And we’re out of breakfast crackers. However, what we can do for you is to cook up some rice. LOTS of rice. That’ll keep you going.

Well prepared? Not us. Still, we were on a quest, and nothing and nobody could stand in our way.

We left behind the jungle terrain that formed the first hour of our hike and entered the ash plains of Mordor; desolate expanses of black bereft of flora or fauna (other than the ever encroaching orcs of course). Our course took us ever onwards, towards the fiery crater that formed our goal; fortunately our elven-woven hiking gear provided some protection from unfriendly eyes. Also from the rain. For yes, of course it rained. This wouldn’t be a sweeping 3 part epic without a storm or two. We got pretty darn wet before we reached our campsite for the evening, an ill-omened place with only a mean, smoking hut for shelter. Our men put up our tents, and undeterred by the now torrential rain, we set off for Mount Doom. I mean Mount Ambrym. One and a bit hours scrambling over lava later, we arrived at the peak. We saw……nothing. Torrential rain, don’cha know – so cloudy we could hardly see each other never mind the promised fiery crack. There went our plans for some nice hot rice that night. Back we marched to the shelter, warmed only by the promise of drying off in the shelter of our tent and some sitting round the fire telling camping stories.

You know that there highly technical tent? Well, it was about an inch deep in water when we returned – clearly not elven made. Us hobbits have good sturdy hairy feet but that’s just too much to take. James-Frodo set the men to try setting it up again whilst we sat in the hut by the fire, weeping sooty tears as we tied to avoid death through smoke inhalation. Eventually we prepared our dinner – cold rice and tuna warmed (smoked?) near the fire (not at all what we likes my precious, we likes our fish RAWWWWWWW and WRRIIGGGGLINGGGG) and, utterly dampened by the day, went to bed. James-Frodo’s tent intervention meant the tent didn’t leak TOO much during the night and it was warm enough that I reckon I got a good solid hour or so of sleep before waking bright eyed for breakfast the next morning.

Breakfast: cold rice.

James-Frodo by this point was clearly unwell. He maintained that this was the combined effect of the chill and rain of yesterday, smoke inhalation and a shoddy night’s sleep, but I felt sure that the real reason was due to the heavy burden he was carrying; we still has about a pound of rice left by this point and by his heavy hanging head I knew this tortured him – but any time I tried to assist him, he thrust me angrily away crying that the rice was his and his alone. Sergi-Pippin and Miriam-Merry tried to brighten the atmosphere with their jokes and laughs, but to no avail. We knew there would be a 3 hour walk out of Mordor, and set in grimly to achieve our escape.

Yes, that “3 hours to the nearest village” thing. Ummm, that wasn’t true. It’s actually 7 hours to the nearest village. Yep, we know you’re out of water. And walking across arid plains through highly sulfurous air. Still, you’ll be alright. Famous sturdiness of the hobbits and all that. Anyway, you’ve some nice cold rice to look forward to for your lunches……Cue small panic: Where’s the rice? Gone. The porters had abandoned us in Mordor and taken it. Or that’s the official reason; personally I suspect Gollum.

Anyway, after a 7 hour walk with no water, food or shelter, we made it. And the village that we ended up in, glory of glories, had coconuts for us to slake our thirst, and also offered us some traditional “laplap” (ground manioc with coconut milk), typically something us tourists politely nibble on before discarding, that was eaten in a flash before the chief’s somewhat startled eyes.

Yep, we made it. You see, things always work out ok in the South Pacific. You just have to go along with the ride.

As entrances go, that of Chief Sekor of Olal village, North Ambrym, into our lives was pretty memorable – striding towards us through the rainforest, clad only in a namba (waist belt and banana leaf penis sheath – see photos) and grasping his chieftain’s stick. We very firmly were not in Kansas any more. Where the hell were we and how the hell did we get here?!

We didn’t really know what to expect from Vanuatu. It’s well known amongst Australians as a very-slightly-more-adventurous-than-Bali honeymoon destination, with enough 5 star waterfront resorts to shake a stick at. But equally one of our fellow travelers in PNG had spoken glowingly of the still active kastom culture prevalent in the outerlying islands, and this really hooked us – the Mt Hagen show had been so incredible that we knew we wanted to see more. So (obviously), we googled what to do with ourselves in our 2 weeks there, and came across an entry for the “Back to Our Roots” festival in Ambrym, one of the country’s more kastom-oriented islands – contact Chief Sekor of Olal village for further information. Which we duly did (for future reference, one contacts chiefs nowadays via mobile phone and the appropriate way to address them is, simply, as “Chief”), to be wooed with the promise of Chief-ordained boat transfer from the airport and a place to stay (in the Chief’s village no less. Actually in his guest bungalows, but I’d rather avoid the word bungalow. Chief Sekor was a pretty imposing chap whilst bungalow conjures a vision of an aging Surrey golfer clad in slacks). All sounded pretty interesting but we hemmed and hawed a bit – the internal flight schedule meant the festival would need to take a big chunk of our available time in Vanuatu and there’s not THAT much else to do on Ambrym. Hagen fuelled, however, we decided to go for it.

Chief Sekor’s entrance made us pretty confident we’d made the right decision, and that was BEFORE we saw the dancing. Or heard about the pig.

Yep, the pig. As we kicked back with a nightly cup of kava (see tasting notes) we were informed that the festivities of the next few days would include a pig killing. Well, ok, not unusual in these parts. And that the pig would meet its end by being ceremonially clubbed to death (as per tradition) – by one of our fellow tourists. Wow. This was a surprise – not least to Patrick, the Sydney based financial analyst to whom that honour fell (unlike us lucky but lazy layabouts, Patrick had spent the last 6 months in correspondence with Chief Sekor planning out his holiday, and the festival, in some detail and the two had built up quite a rapport). The pig killing in effect raised Patrick to the status of Chief Sekor’s tribal brother. We were all pretty excited – and to be honest more than a little apprehensive – about the next day’s events.

The festival itself was wonderful but rather hard to describe. You can see a little from the photos and the video – but this was about as far from the Hagen show as a South Pacific tribal kastom event can be. There were about 10 tourists, and maybe 100 or so locals, gathered in a traditional clearing, lined with tree fern carvings and dappled with shade. The setting, the hypnotic drumbeat, the singing, the pounding dancing, all combined into a magical and heartfelt experience. The dances were clearly an active part of tribal life – the kids here learn them when they’re tiny and all can perform the steps by heart without pause – which doesn’t sound that impressive, maybe, until you realise that some of these dances go on for nearly an hour. In fact, the primary dance (the Rom dance – in the photos it’s the one with the masked and cloaked creatures) is one of the key mechanics through which a man can “grade take”, ultimately allowing him to become a village or even area chief – the other main mechanic being the killing of large numbers of pigs, in particular pigs which have been hand reared for 10 or more years to develop tusks which grow in a complete circle. Yep, being a pig round these here parts carries some responsibility.

As for the pig killing? Patrick looked dignified and rather brave in his namba, falling into the rhythm of the event with grace. But yes, it’s pretty upsetting to see a ceremonial clubbing – the pig arrives hogtied and fully aware of its impending doom, and the clubbing is enough to inflict pain (pigs really do squeal) but not death, leaving a slightly sour taste in this pampered Westerner’s mouth.

I’ve rarely, if ever, felt further away from home … but that was an overwhelmingly positive feeling. Roll on, new experiences.

Ahhh, Kumul Lodge. So right in many ways; so frustrating in so many others. It’s like PNG in miniature.

We headed there just after the Mt Hagen show – as you can imagine, we were still on a bit of a high after that. We’d plumped for Kumul as our destination as the alternative, Tari, sounded potentially a little far to travel and a little dangerous (rumours of an ongoing tribal war), and Kumul sounded nice – lots of birds of paradise, great hiking including to some local villages and a beautiful location not far from Mt Hagen. All of which was true.

Well, sort of. And there’s the rub.

There were birds of paradise – 8 species in fact. It’s just that only one species lives at the same altitude as the lodge, and for the others you need to take a tour to see them. Cost: $150 per person. There was hiking available – but only really along the road and a few short trails around the hotel; the other trails were never used, not really maintained and virtually un-passable (we tried: see “Mt Hagen Running Man”) and of course you needed to take a guide. The closest village was actually 10 kilometres and over 1,000 vertical metres away from the hotel – only walkable if the lodge provided a one way car transfer – and they didn’t have a car (we managed it by hitching a ride – with some other tourists one way and in a truck on the way back). Food was available – unless you were late or they forgot about you (both happened) – including a complimentary plate of fruit. Only it wasn’t complimentary, it was an additional $10 per mealtime.

Just enough minor annoyances to really take the shine off what should have been a great place – yes it was beautiful, yes the bungalow was lovely and rustic, and YES we saw birds of paradise. We both just ended up wildly frustrated by the place.

And yet, in some ways, we talk more about Kumul than we do about many of the more spectacular places we saw in PNG. We think that maybe in some ways, it provided a truer vision of the country than almost anywhere else we stayed.

A few vignettes:

The village down the road was abandoned and burned down. There had been a land dispute between villagers which escalated and ultimately culminated in some shootings. The entire village took sides, and war kicked off. Ultimately, the place became so dangerous that every single family abandoned both the village and their ancestral land (and only source of income) to stay with relatives. A man from Hagen was hired by one side to burn down the remaining houses – the other side found him and killed him. Negotiations were currently taking place as to appropriate reparations – in the form of live pigs to be transferred, and only once this had been agreed would any of the villagers be able to return home. This wasn’t considered at all unusual locally, other than the fact that the dispute was within just one village, rather than the usual two.

Our guide, Max, was a born naturalist with a burning ambition to start up his own eco-tourism business centred around an orchid garden. Only he couldn’t get any backing. Partially because under the PNG “wantok” system, he owed his loyalty to one of his relatives, the owner of Kumul Lodge – who preferred that Max spend his time guiding tourists and maintaining the grounds of the lodge. Partially because Max was wildly unrealistic – I’ve never met a man so bitter about the refusal of local people to work for him on the promise of future payment as and when the orchid garden took off. Partially because the whole idea is so flawed – who’s going to come to see a 40 foot square orchid garden, however nice, when it’s miles from anywhere and smack in the middle of Max’s sweet potato crop? But how do you work that out when you live in a country with minimal education and a staggering 75% unemployment?

We asked for the bill on our last day and were a little surprised when it took 20 minutes to produce. And then it was wrong. The reception lady simply couldn’t add. I’m not being unkind when I say that, rather it’s a simple statement of fact. Up until about 50 years ago, the PNG counting system consisted of 1, 2, 3, many. Given the relatively limited amount of cash trading, that system still works pretty well for much of the population and the basic numeracy skills that we take for granted are just not that widespread. Most adults over the age of 30 probably weren’t taught much (any?) maths and can’t do even basic sums without the aid of a calculator.

Our airport transfer, which we carefully arranged with the lodge manager the evening before. They forgot about it. We managed to make the plane, but only because they were able to speak to one of their wantoks down at the airport and get us ticketed (we arrived 10 minutes before the flight took off).

I could go on, but I won’t.

Suffice to say that Kumul, like PNG, got under our skin. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

We arrived at the little port of Pagwe, on the banks of the Sepik, after a bouncy 4 hour ride in a minibus, broken only by a short stop at a local market for us to buy some fresh produce.  At the time, we couldn’t quite work out why we were being encouraged with such enthusiasm to treat ourselves to a (delicious, by the way) young coconut, though this later became clear (see “Tuna’n’Noodles” post for further detail).  Waiting for us at the dock were our dugout canoe – all 20 foot of it, hand carved some 50 or more years ago from an exceptionally hard wood which grows locally – plus our crew for the next few days – George, Chris and our guide, Josh.  Deck chairs having been ceremonially placed in the canoe for us (the crew sat in the bottom of the canoe, but obviously us tourists are special) and our luggage and food supplies loaded, we were off!

The basic program for our trip was: day one – stop at some local villages on the main river to check out the spirit houses (more of which later); day two – head down to Blackwater Lakes, a stunning area upstream from the river and at comparatively high altitude where the style of the villages – lots of stilts – is particularly attractive, as is the mountainous background; day three – head to Chambry Lakes, another scenic area where the fish are so plentiful that as the lakes dry up in summer, it’s just not physically possible to catch them all and the area becomes quite smelly; day four – return to Pagwe to connect back to Wewak early the next morning.

So basically, 4 days spent mainly sitting in a remarkable old dugout canoe, watching river life gliding by.  Amazing scenery.  Hundreds of water birds (ibises, fish eagles).  Scores of local people out fishing in their dugouts, all of whom wave at you as you go past – we felt like the Queen.  Then we’d pull into some village somewhere and see what there was to see – generally, a spirit house or men’s house containing the traditional village cultural things (and some carvings to buy – yeah!), maybe a health care centre or a waterfall.  Return to the canoe and pootle on a bit before coming to a rest in a local village where we’d stay the night. At night, mainly just some relaxing time with the locals (though we did go crocodile hunting the first night – more exciting than it sounds, the largest we saw was about 18 inches!!).  Unbelievably relaxing, and yet the trip, and in particular the way of life of the local people, gave us a huge amount to think about – we were certainly never bored.

The comedy part of our trip came from the organizational front – or rather lack of it.

We got our first hint of this as we rocked up to the village guesthouse on day one – only to be chased out again thirty seconds later.  The guesthouse had been badly overbooked (all guests of Seby…oops), with 21 people fighting over about 12 rooms / bedding piles.  Fortunately, we were rescued by Sara, Seby’s sister in law, who carted us off to her house and put us up for the night with only the tiniest of avaricious glances at our food supply box to provide an inkling of an explanation as to this unlooked for generosity.  Part of the deal we struck was that any food we didn’t eat would go to her (as would some of the other more random supplies we carried – 2 bottles of curry powder, a couple of boxes of Ziploc bags … anyone would think the supplies had been provided specifically to address certain village requirements rather than to feed us for 3 days).  Actually, whilst it got a bit grating, her continual exclamations as to how lucky we were felt pretty accurate as we chatted around the fire for a couple of hours, listening to the sounds of  our fellow tourists haggling over the last sleeping mat.

Our next hint came via a delegation, led by our guide, Josh, wanting to know what we planned to do over the next few days.  The itinerary, so carefully planned with Seby, hadn’t been communicated to him so he had no clue as to what he should be doing.

This, as it turned out, was exacerbated rather by the fact that Josh had never guided before.  He told us this on day 2 – James asked how long he’d guided before, to which the merry response was “But I’m not a guide!!” (sub voce: what the hell made you think that??).  50 miles from the nearest cell phone signal, we gulped, smiled and accepted it.

The break though came later that day – a clear understanding between us and Josh (a) that we knew that he knew that we knew that Seby had totally failed to make any kind of plans whatsoever for us and that as a result, we and Josh were sort of relying on being helped out by random friends and family of Josh and (b) that we didn’t mind a bit – we were having a fantastic time, a complete adventure, and Josh was an unbelievably good guide – he is the main tradesman used by his village when they run out of sago and have to trade with other more sago-rich villages downstream, so he knows the river, and most of the people on it, backwards.  After which, we all rubbed along together just fine and Josh noticeably relaxed – to the extent that he was then perfectly happy the next day to act as our supplier for banana homebrew, despite the severe consequences of being found out in that activity by Sara, a committed Seventh Day Adventist (and also someone who was clearly keen that we spend most of our time sleeping and thereby consuming only a minimal amount of our food supply!).

We had a wonderful time on the river.  The mild chaos was oddly part of the charm – it never interfered with our pleasure and I think in most instances enhanced it.  Staying with Sara gave us a real perspective on modern life in the Sepik, that I don’t think we would otherwise have really understood.  And Josh, once he’d realized we weren’t going to explode on him, was an entertaining and informative guide to a part of the world he clearly loved.

Or maybe my hindsight is just coloured by realizing just how fortunate we really were – another group of Seby’s who we met in Wewak had spent 3 days eating peanut butter and crackers after Seby forgot to restock the boat with food.

Compared to which, our trip was LUXURY!