Kokoda Track- PNG

Welcome to PNG!!

Hey hey hey...

Flying into Port Moresby

So we're back and we survived- to be honest it wasn't as full on as I was expecting, which, believe it or not is a bit disappointing considering all the bad press the Kokoda Track gets! People who die up there must so incredibly unfit, because although there were a few tough climbs that seemed to go on and on, the way we went (from owers to kokoda) got easier and easier!!  Most people tend to do it from the opposite direction... Anyway, so would I recommend it? Yes, maybe and no....  Yes if you love Australian war history, and don't mind guided tours and can handle camping for 10 days.... maybe if you say yes to any of the above... and NO if you are unfit/never bushwalked/can't handle pit toilets etc etc etc.  If you are looking for the ultimate PNG experience, I would say you're better off maybe taking a bus ride from Port Moresby and going on an overnight trip to Sogeri National park, where you can stop past the Owers corner monument to the war, and then heading off to Paradise, ie New Ireland Province/ East New Britain (yes I'm biased!) or Maybe the Sepik/Milne Bay (although I haven't been to the latter two, these are reportedly very beautiful and tourist friendly).  Anyway, here are some Kokoda pictures, and I hope you enjoy xoxox

Owers Corner, where we started the track

This Owers Corner, where we began our adventure.  We started later than the rest of the group, and the sun set quickly after I took this photo.  We ended up walking in the dark for about 2 hours before we got to the campsite on our first night, in the rain and through a river!!

Here is a map of the trek- we started from the left and kept going up and up and up...!!

Muddy boots @#$%@#$

This is a typical sort of picture, (with my lover is the foreground) where you walk down through thick jungle to a village and then make your way back up the next mountain.  The track climbs quite high, at the peak, we reached approx 2660m, which is higher than Mt Kosciusko! So while it can be quite hot and humid, due to being in the tropics, the temperature can also drop quite low, especially if it is raining or at night.  So there is a lot of huddling around fires at night time... of course this space is shared with damp/stinky boots/clothes/poles and other paraphenalia, so wasn't always the greatest space to hang out@!

Looking from Hoi village over to Kokoda airstrip- that's a cocoa tree in the foreground :)
And, YES! the jungle really is that thick in places.... so full on!

Apparently this house has sat empty for 4 years can you believe it? What a beautiful spot...! Apparently it was meant for tourists but no one has got around to completing it... ah ... that's known as PNG time for the uninitiated!!!

In this village we met an actual Fuzzy Wuzzy (an original carrier from WWII) who was apparently 105 years old!!!

Here's a picture of Ovoru Indiki Naduri, (taken from Charlie Lynn's Flickr site http://www.flickr.com/photos/adventurekokoda/3100583308/sizes/m/in/photostream/ )

 

Nice bridge huh : ) It was actually fun going across the rivers on these bridges, it was the end of the dry season so there wasn't really huge water flows, but I imagine at another time of year they could be quite scary with the great engineering of slippery logs and tenous rope handles that the boys put up to help the whitepela folk across...

The whole gang after the dawn service at Isurava Memorial. The Adventure Kokoda boys sang a couple of tunes and put us to shame.  It was actually really embarrassing that we mumbled along to our national anthem (with the words just in case we didn't know them) while the boys harmonised and sang with passion.  Just goes to show that a good national anthem can be inspiring whereas one that is antiqued and irrelevant like ours  does not inspire national pride!!!

Here's a psuedo family snap (Dad/Mum/Sam/So/Me/Simon) aren't we stylin!!!

Here's a gorgeous picture of my guide Winsor, and his two boys.  He lives 2 hours walk from kokoda, and got his wife and boys to walk all the way there just to meet me.  He made his younger son roll down his trousers for this photo, but I accidently cut their legs off anyway hahaha.

Here's our plane back to Port Moresby.  It was sooo random, but we actually knew the pilot from when we lived in New Ireland, what can you say it's a small world!!