Queensland East Coast Roads: Yaaaaawwwnn!!

I left cairns yesterday in the afternoon after I went to the garage to pay the final bill for the repair of the damaged car. Thankfully it didn’t came that expensive as I thought it would be – and finally I was able to get another discount. But in summary its of course just too much. Every $ was too much. However, it was my fault... So now im happy having that topic behind me!

After PNG and the "nice" Cairns, im back on the road and first, I have to acclimate myself to the road and the driving again. The scenery is completely different than it was up until Cairns. Until there was a “very special” landscape, made of desert and a kind of a mystical emptiness all around. Along the east coast, it always remembers me driving in Europe. On the route are famous locations like Townsville, Airlie Beach, Rockhampton, Gladstone and Hervey Bay. Famous, but the connecting roads are too european and too boring - its green, has trees, narrow streets, houses beside the road and cows on the willows everywhere :D

Cairns: Great Barrier Reef

On friday and satruday I was on the road, driving north to Cape Tribulation and Cooktown. Drove about 300kms along the coast and Cooktown was actually pretty nice! After passing Cape Tribulation, the road turned into something like a rollercoaster which huge gradients up and down for several dozen KM’s. I never saw the Pajiero sweating and suffering like today. On the road I passed another car, which winked me to stop. He asked how far it is to the next city, cause his car lost the “turbo” and doesn’t have the power anymore to climb the severe hills. He stucked there in the jungle (haha) and thankfully i didnt face the same circumstances, when I drove back to cairns on the same road.

 

Just came back from the two day dive trip at the Great Barrier Reef and it was much better than expected. As I reduced my expectations to exactly zero point zero, which means dead corals, a few disabled annoying fishes, and a bunch of beginner divers which destroy left and right beside me the reef like typhoons under the water and reduce the visability to 2 meters. So based on this, the trip was an absolute success J.

Well I guess diving in Australia is compared to other countries anyway different. Here, a dive boat with 100 or 200 divers on a boat is average. Thankfully I found a boat that was limited to about 50 divers, which were reduced to about 30, when we were transferred to the liveaboard (the boat that has facilities for overnight trips). So since the transfer to that boat the space per person increased and the feeling, being in an overcrowded prison somewhere in Afghanistan disappeared. And even underwater there was very seldom the situation seeing other divers except the buddy.

The main difference is, that the divers here were allowed to dive without a guide. So they can make their own buddy teams and dive the own route and speed. I teamed up with another swiss guy, Johann. He was there with his wife, who was on the boat for snorkeling. He had about the same amount of dives and therefore the diving was great. We always hurried on gearing up the dive equipment, so that we were the first divers in the water and therefore had the best chance seeing the bigger fishes.

The last years I have heard and read several times, that the corals here are about to bleach out more and more. And it is acutally really like that. Huge fields have already completely died and look like a coral disposal area. But there are still big areas, where the corals are awesome and the especially the diversity and amount of small fish is great.


Now im sitting in McDonalds somewhere in the middle of cairns and some minutes ago I booked the a one way flight from Brisbane to the Solomon Islands. This means, I have time to drive down the 1800km to Brisbane until December 12 and I guess I will leave Cairns tomorrow or on Wednesday.

Cairns: Is it malaria?

Today I prepared all the pictures, sorted them and started uploading. So I think by tomorrow the most of them are all available online!

All day long I felt somehow sick! I didn’t have real pain in the stomach, but there was a little pain. Also I had to visit the toilet many times today! Beside this I felt also some kind of dizziness, tired eyes and little bit of headache! By now, I feel alright again, had dinner and don’t feel anything anymore like i did during the day! When these symptoms are still there tomorrow, I think I will go to the hospital. Cause after being in East Timor and PNG the chance having malaria or dengue fever is quite big. Hopefully its just some normal kind of “sickness” – im actually not so in the mood spend the next two weeks in a hospital. But if anything is wrong, then thankfully im back in Australia and do not have to say hello to a PNG hospital somewhere in the jungle beside the sepik river..haha!!

Cairns: ByeBye Papua

Im fine but tired :D And my eyes burn still little bit from the boat drive on Wednesday.:)

I finally arrived in Cairns today during midday, after a delay of 1 hour by the plane in Port Moresby. In the plane I created a things-to-do list and the first thing on it is getting the car from the service station. Thankfully the car was still there and not stolen or anything. And… tada.. its is also everything alright with the car. A regular service was done and nothing else seems to be wrong.

Right back in the campground, the first thing I did was getting out the bbq grill. I couldn’t await to have the first bite of the delicious fresh bought T-bone steak :D! Now its 10pm and my list of things to do didn’t get much smaller, but im on the best way to achieve it the next days. For example there are tasks like “contacting the crashed-car-man”, “planning-the-next-days-and-weeks”, “washing clothes”, “sorting pictures” and other small but time consuming things.
Im on the same campground as last time,but the amount of campers has increased by nearly 100%. Most of them are japanese campers that look like hippies from 40 years ago :)

Port Moresby

So today morning at the airport in Port Moresby (PNG) I went to Muriels travel agency and showed her the pics ive made the last weeks and months. I spent her a coffee for saying thank you for all the assistance the last two weeks. The informations and help i got from her was incredible! She also told me about her future projects, where she is going to build a guesthouse in the highpotential tourist area "Tufi". I really like that idea and I believe that project is going to be an absolute success!

I also called Samuel the Pastor from Mount Hagen. He was little bit sad about my news that I didn’t have enough time to make it to his place in Mount Hagen. But he said, when I come to PNG next time, Im very welcomed..

One thing i missed in PNG was eating croco meat. I really wanted to taste the croco, but I always forgot to ask the people there, if they have it around. Just yesterday, in Boroko (Port Moresby), I tried to find a store where they sell it. But I didn’t have luck…! Maybe I can do it another day and on another place…

PNG: Back in Port Moresby

The diving in Loloata was nice, but compared to other south east asia spots very cold. Just 26 degrees. So therefore i had to put on a rented short sleeved neopren, which looked so old that it nearly fall appart while even touching it. The diving brought some nice seasnails, a huge seasnake that looked like a phyton, an eagle ray and nice corals.

On my last day here in PNG, i roamed around Port Moresby and went with the public buses to Boroko and Ela Beach area. While walking up to "Paga Hill", i passed some seriously strange looking people and finally i got approached by some security guards, which told me strictly not going up there alone, cause up there live the shelterless people. So i offered them 5 Kina, and those 4 guards brought me up there with their fenced-window truck (incl a guard dog).

Its a pitty, that "Paga Hill" is so dirty and home of shelterless people. Its probably the nicest viewpoint to see Port Moresby Harbour. In addition there is a historical WW2 tunnel, which served as protection and base for the japanese soldiers. As of today, its occupied by the shelterless people.




View from Paga Hill over Port Moresby Harbour



PNG: Meeting a real Crocodile Hunter

Sitting now in the plane from Madeng to Port Moresby. After the trip from Angoram to Wewak during the night with a public bus, i first slept for several hours in an old run down guesthouse. After waking up i noticed some pain in my eyes, which have turned red. I think it was some kind of infection from the sepik river water, which splashed in my eyes while driving with the boat from Tambunun back to Angoram.

Yesterday i walked around several km's in Wewak. There was this japanes WW2 memorial site, based on the edge of a hill. The machine guns are still there and were used to attack the australian planes. In the afternoon i walked around in the town, in the middle of the crowd inside the market area. Very busy and smelly. Ugly betel nut chewing and spitting people everywhere. And the market seems to exist only to provide those people new "ammo" to chew. Betel nuts are literally everywhere and the ground all around the town is turned red from the spit.



Sava "The Croc-Hunter"

In the guesthouse I met another guest - or better said - patron of the guesthouse. It was Sava Maksic, an 75 year old crocodile hunter who is originaly from europe, but moved to PNG in 1967. He told me interesting stories about the live in PNG from those days. He also wrote a book about crocodile hunting and he is a notorious crocodile hunter and well known as Master Sava in the Sepik River area. Also he told me the stories from the highland fightings he experienced personally, where the tribes fought each other with spears and bows.


Today, after arriving in Port Moresby, i will reside in the same guesthouse as two weeks ago and tomorrow i go to Loloata Islands for diving.

PNG: Stranded at Sepik River

The other day I went fishing and they showed me how to fish with the spear. And the little boys had their slingshot, with which they were hunting for birds. Unbelievable how good their aim is. Even if they missed the most shots, the stone missed the target only by few cm, which is 30 metres away. In the village ,i was allowed to walk around and make pictures of the houses, the sculptures and the famous carvings.
Actually i planned to leave the village on monday. But plans dont have any meaning in the Sepik area. Cause finally i left the village on tuesday evening. The reasons are the lack of communication possibilities in the villages. There is no mobile connection and just a few of those people have cellphones. The houses are scattered for several km's along the sepik and the boat, the driver and the passengers are all long distances away from each other. So organizing a fully loaded boat is not that easy. Also they have to organize the poorly available petrol, which is so expensive that it only makes sense to drive in a fully loaded boat. Beside this, the people are not familiar with timetables. It seems, their timetable is their mood.

Well, it was said the boat is running on sunday evening. Then cause there was no boat, it was obvious that it will be some time during monday. As there was no boat on monday, cause they had some troubles and fightings in the neigbour village, the boat was rescheduled to tuesday early morning. So i packed all my things again and looked forward to finally leave from there that morning. But all the waiting didnt help and after a son of Raymond went with the canoe to the boat driver, for finding out what the problem is, it was said that the boat is definately driving on tuesday afternoon. And so it did. We left Tambunun in the late afternoon and had to drive up to Angoram, the final destination. The trip is bit more than 3 hours, but as we run out of petrol 4km before angoram, we had to flow with the water for some 100 meters to the next tribe village and get some more petrol. By night we arrived then in Angoram and i had to wait there until after midnight, when the bus arrived to pick me up for the next 6 hours long way and super rough road to Wewak. So today by 7am i arrived in the guesthouse here in Wewak and first went to sleep for some hours.

Actually i planned being in Mount Hagen today. But as i didnt have a chance to get on the flight yesterday, Im no more able to go there and stuck here in Wewak until Friday. I will fly back straight to Port Moresby.