Road to Clem’s Place

After this insane day, we woke up in paradise right next to the sea and had breakfast provided by the village.
Then to our surprise it turned out that the guy who was supposed to meet us in Buoana Station, the head of the tourism bureau of Papua New Guinea, was actually in town now. Again, he only walks barefoot around the country and it had taken us quite some drive by car and boat to get here and there was no service anywhere around, so now there was no more surprise why we had missed him the other day. We met him and realized he was batshit crazy. They called him the “Snake Man” because he lived with his 5 sons and his wife in a single room with his 3 snakes.
We gathered in the village at a little corner and he started performing a snake show for us. It started with his 4 older sons arriving and playing traditional music and then continued with him and his little maybe 5 year old son arriving and both pulling out a little snake out of their mouth. He then went to the bushes behind him and pulled out a big ass snake and started doing his show. He put the head of the snake in his mouth, danced with the snakes together with his little sons and just did some random stuff with them for about half an hour.
After the show it was time to say goodbye. We packed our baggage, got back into the boat and drove the 3 hours back with the boat with only a little peeing break in between. Our asses hurt like crazy, there was obviously no proper seat. Arriving back in Lae we got into the car, drove to Etto’s previous hotel to get our bags and continued to the airport. Now it was time to say goodbye to Defol and the remaining porters. There was still a bit of uncertainty around this whole flight booking but we turned out to be able to board the plane. We made it through security which was basically a guy, who had a two-second look in the backpacks of every second person. We took off around noon.
First we had a stopover in Hoskins which was basically just dropping a few passengers without leaving the plane. Then we had a stopover in Rabaul which included changing the plane and finally made it to Kavieng. During the flight you could see archipels. There was one white person approaching us, an Aussie pilot that lived somewhere in PNG with his wife and kid. Basically as soon as you see white people here they approach you because it rarely happens. In Kavieng the luggage drop was basically just a park bench where the airport employees would carry your bags. Two sons or cousins from Clem were picking us up with a van from the airport. As they realized we wanted to go surfing but they didn’t have any surfboards at Clem’s place, first we needed to go get them at some other place. After some drive around we made it to the harbor and entered the banana boat to take off to Clem’s Place.
So again, to showcase the remoteness of this place, how you get there: take a flight to PNG which is already a pain in itself, then take another flight with 2 stopovers to Kavieng which is crazy remote. Before Kavieng there is a little island called New Hanover which is super remote, basically just a jungle. But then, Clem’s place is actually on a tiny island just before New Hanover. It’s right at the Bismarck Sea.
We were driving with the boat for 4h with Clem’s son, cousin and wife. We had an awesome sunset before it got dark. Closely before we arrived in the middle of the dark a fish jumped on Lio into the boat. Getting to Clem’s place was then tough: because of the tide the boat couldn’t reach the beach. We basically had to walk in the dark for 100 meters over the reef with starfishes all over while the other guys were carrying our luggage. Once we made it we got into our little bungalow and had dinner: fish with vegetables. We were obviously the only people on the island.
The bungalow was pretty much the only thing on the island, there was a little common area where we usually hung out and had breakfast, lunch and dinner. The toilets and shower, if you may call them like that, were basically just water pipes and holes. There was again no service around, so a few more days of disconnection were awaiting.Read more