Now We Go Wokabaut

One of the “big” deals of Pacific Orientation Course (POC) is the two day/overnight hike. Basically you hike out from POC until you arrive at the village you’ll be staying overnight in, then the next morning after breakfast, you hike out and catch a Public Motor Vehicle (PMV) back to POC. Well, that’s the short story, anyway.

My backpack
with bedroll tied
to the bottom.

A typical PNG garden, also
what we looked down on as
we walked along the path.
(It's steeper than it looks!)

We packed all our gear up—everything needed for an overnight in the jungle—and then take half of that out, since you have to carry it all on your back, plus your share of the group food. The gear includes a self-inflating sleeping mat (that’s about a foot and a half too short, even for me), two lap laps (for sheets; a piece of fabric about two meters long), a towel (to use as a pillow), toothbrush and toothpaste, a headlamp, water, a plate, cup, and spoon, and one share of the group food for supper, breakfast, and lunch. (You caught me; I didn’t even bring a change of clothes! It was only one night, and I didn’t want to dirty too many clothes!) We headed out Thursday morning going down the mountain from POC; the path we took wrapped around the side of the mountain, all while going down, down, down. At some points the path was only an inch or so wider than my foot, slightly slanted (towards the side with nothing, of course), and lots of loose dirt or mud, which makes finding one’s footing very interesting sometimes! We stopped occasionally to catch our breath, let our strained muscles rest, and appreciate the gorgeous view.

Eventually we made it to the bottom of the mountain, where the path suddenly dead-ended because the path was blocked…now what?! Our two Papua New Guinean guides consulted with a woman tending her nearby garden and found another path that led to a stream. Now, when I first saw the stream, I got a little nervous, because the last hike that ended up in a stream bed…well, we’ve affectionately named that hike “The Death March” because it was so hard. Anyways, this wasn’t nearly so bad; nobody fell in or wiped out or anything quite so dramatic as last time. J Some people were wearing hiking shoes, so they carefully picked their way down the stream, finding rocks or things sticking up out of the water to walk on and not get wet. The rest of us, with our sandals, plowed through the water (incredibly refreshing!), joyfully getting our feet cooled off.

Scraping the meat
out of the coconut.

A couple hours later we made it to the village we spent the night at and sat down and talked with our hosts for quite a while. At some point, the ladies started preparing to cook supper, so we all dug the food we brought along out of our packs and offered to help. One of the other wait skin (white skin) ladies and I learned how to scrape the meat out of a coconut and then rinse it to make coconut water to cook the rice, kau kau (sweet potato), and kumu (greens) in. It’s much harder than it seems! While I was taking my turn, one of the PNG guys asked when we were going to eat, and somebody said around midnight! I’m sure they could have gone much faster without our “help,” but they truly enjoy teaching us, and we like to learn, especially since we really don’t know anything! We ate supper around 6:30 (nowhere near midnight, thank you very much!) and then had tea and popcorn and talked until late. A PNG tradition is to stori (talk); it doesn’t matter what you talk about (they do like snake and hunting stories, though), they just like to chat.



Most of our group, enjoying
the view as we take a short rest.

The next morning, we had breakfast (granola with milk powder), and headed out to catch a PMV back to POC. There aren’t really “PMV stops” like we would picture in the US or even in Mexico, although there are definitely places where people congregate to catch a PMV. Our guide called a friend who owns a truck (which doubles as a PMV when he wants to make some extra money) who came and picked us up and brought us back to POC.

And thus ended our overnight hike through the jungles of PNG!

Some school kids; we interrupted their
school day by walking passed the school.
(Wait skins attract a lot of attention!)