PNG: Active volcano

The diving in Madeng was actually awesome. I just had two dives, but there were wonderful things. For example the huge swarm of barracudas, which was hunting circling around the tuna's. Or the two big sepia which werent shy at all - unlike other places, where i have seen them.

Cargo Ship

The trip with the boat to Wewek with the cargo ship took more time than expected. We left the wharf two hours too late and the trip itself lasted for about more than 20 hours. While waiting for the ship, i met different local people. One of them, Isaac, is a betel nut mover and travels this route every month. He was something like a vip and was able to get on the ship as the first passenger. Somehow he managed that i didnt have to wait in the line with all the other passengers and could enter the ship as the second passenger right after him. The ship had a dorm with about 30 bunk beds. So the first 30 passengers were the lucky ones who had a bed. The other ones had to sit or stand in the cargo plattform beside all the containers.



Volcano

In the middle of the night i woke up and suddendly saw something curious. There was far away some kind of orange, red stripe visible in the dark. The locals told me that it is the active living volcano. For about 1 hour i was able to see the lava pouring down on the side of the volcano and it was very nice to watch that.


The next morning on the ship, after i slept very well, i left my camera for some seconds beside me without watchig it. And "zaaasch" - yeah it was gone. I reported it to Isaac, the mister betel nut, and he immediately went somewhere i couldnt see. Suddendly he showed up with a group of guys. They introduced themself as the captain and some of the crewmembers and they will do everything to get my camera back. So they said, they will call the police and when the ship arrives in the warf. The police will search every single bag of every passenger until the camera shows up!!! People on the boat started talking and it went quite nosiy around there. 15 minutes later, suddendly one guy from the crew came along and asked me how my camera looks like. I explained him and then showed me my camera - i got it back! Unbelievable!!!

I asked the guy who saw the robber of my camera, if he can tell me which person it was, but he didn’t find him again. Maybe its better that way. Otherwise I probably would have seen that this gangster looks like a normal person, and my trust in other, friendly local people would have decreased.

On the boat i met different other people and there was this familiy, which lives beside the Sepik river in a tribes village. As i mentioned that i wanted to go to the sepik river and visit one of these villages, they invited me to come with them and live with them in their house. For me, of course totally unexpected, but an incredible chance to get easy and cheap access to the sepik. So i decided to go with them.

 

Acutally, i didn't have any hesitation about going with them without knowing them. Probably it was because I just trusted my feeling I had about these person and the family. I saw very good and friendly human beings in them. But it was indeed little bit strange the first night, when I was with them. As there was no light in the house, I just saw some strange looking faces sitting around me and wanted to hear me talking something – even they didn’t understand it …hahaha.. and pantomime was not possible in the dark ..:D!