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- Apr 30, 2019
- 🌧 29 °C
- Altitude: 17 m
Papua New GuineaEast Sepik ProvinceKorosameri River4°15’21” S 143°25’50” E
Road to Kanganamun
April 30, 2019 in Papua New Guinea ⋅ 🌧 29 °C
As our flight left at 05:50am we had to drive with a boat to Kavieng very early morning. This time our flight went via Hoskins and Port Moresby to then reach Wewak. We arrived in Wewak 11am among an Aussie military unit that had training in the area. Again, the luggage drop was just a park bench where the employees would take the bags.
Getting out of the airport we got picked up by our new guide, Albert, and his nephew. We fueled up the car and continued to the supermarket to do grocery shopping. After some problems with withdrawing cash we actually managed to do so in a bank. He was in PNG for months already, only travelling via missionary flights and only sleeping for free in churches.
We took off to Pagwi, the drive took around 3-4 hours on the most horrible road. On the way we stopped at a few street vendors to buy, well, betelnut. In Pagwi we hopped on Albert’s canoe to visit Sepik river villages. You would probably rather describe it as a tree log. It was roughly 10m long and not even 50 centimetres wide. It had a motor and in the middle they put two amazingly chill chairs for Lio and me.
We drove with the canoe to Kanganamun, the village where we would stay for the next few days. We didn’t take the regular route but went via shortcuts that were accessible only during the wet season. In that period all villages are flooded by the Sepik river so you can go through the middle of the jungle with the canoe and don’t have to go through the mainstream. On the flipside it means you always have to be on a boat or in your house and it’s more dangerous. The reason why the wet season is more dangerous is because when everything is flooded the crocs could be literally anywhere: below the house or in the reed that we were just passing. While in the dry season the crocodiles are usually hanging out only in the river, now they can get close to where people stay. Still there are only a few fatal cases (apparently).
We arrived in Kanganamun around sunset. The entire village was flooded with water and you had to go around with a canoe. The houses were obviously prepared for that and built on pillars. You access the house by stopping with the canoe just next to the house where they built a little pier from where you go directly from the canoe to the steps of the house. Our house was a little hut, inside there was basically just a table and a few mats with mosquito nets on the floor. During the wet season there are relatively less mosquitos, which still means that there were more mosquitos we had ever seen in our lives. People basically constantly clap with their hands on their skin to get rid of them. Albert warned us that from the white mosquitos we get Malaria. Once that happens we are in for a horribly painful day trip to the next hospital.
There were cats walking around everywhere, once even a cat right next to our beds ripped a mouse. The toilet was outside, a little hole from where everything would fall directly in the river.
Albert prepared the dinner which was usually very basic pasta and rice. Afterwards we went to sleep. There was basically no electricity and service at all. The neighbor had a little solar panel that would charge 10% of your phone if you gave it to him for the entire day, so it was pretty useless. After it was dark, there was not much to do apart from reading Lio’s Lonely Planet about all of Papua and Solomon Islands or playing Sudoku.Read more
