PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea (24 Aug 2003) - "This country," goes the local bromide, "is a gold mine in a mine field: Avoid the mines and you will reap the reward." Margaret Mead went to Papua New Guinea to study exotic cultures. Michael Rockefeller died there mysteriously -- cannibals? -- while collecting primitive art. And American soldiers went there in World War II because they had no choice. Now, adventure tourists -- and not a few "pleasure" tourists -- are rediscovering this 600-island nation off the northern coast of Australia. Clad in little more than bright red and yellow face paint, bodies smeared with clay, bearing bows, arrows, spears, axes, bush knives and daggers, 30 fierce-looking Huli warriors approached one tour group. The lead man raised his bow high and said with an accent nearly British: "Good afternoon, I hope you enjoy your stay in Huliland." The warriors chatted a short while, some taking a chew of betel nut. Then, as suddenly as they arrived, they all smiled, waved goodbye and trotted down the road. They were heading to a payback negotiation with a neighboring clan. Amazing diversity Papua New Guinea, or PNG as it is called, is a raw land, remarkably untamed: swamp, jagged limestone, mud, moss forest, suffocating heat and highland chill -- home to plumed, pearl-shelled villagers and prosaic hill people, tiny tree kangaroos and enormous butterflies. It is this diversity that has, for so long, excited a raft of explorers and anthropologists. But the Huli encounter is just one slice of Papua New Guinea, a dark, daunting and curiously colorful nation at the end of the world for Americans. Yes, the Peace Corps pulled out "for safety reasons," and the State Department offers Americans a primer on how to avoid robberies, rapes and carjackings, but Papua New Guinea's trouble spots are no more representative of the nation as a whole than the Black Hole is of all Oakland Raiders fans. Besides, Papua New Guinea's No. 1 lure is what is outside the cities, not inside them: vast, unspoiled wilderness and primitive cultures, a polyglot of 820 languages, 700 varieties of birds (including 38 of the world's 42 bird of paradise species), 2,800 types of orchids, beaches, volcanoes, rugged highlands, tropical rain forests, the world's largest butterfly (Queen Alexandra Birdwing -- wingspan: one foot) and some of the world's best diving and snorkeling, combining spectacular coral and sea life, with abundant World War II aircraft wreckage sites. Part of the British Commonwealth, Papua New Guinea is a young nation, born in 1975. It comprises island chains, archipelagoes and the eastern half of New Guinea, the second-largest island in the world (after Greenland), a nearly roadless expanse of lowland plains and central highlands with peaks rising to 16,000 feet and tropical glaciers. The western half of New Guinea, known as Irian Jaya, is part of Indonesia. Christianity is practiced by 95 percent of the population. Half are protestant and a fourth are are Roman Catholic. But those religions coexist with traditional local faiths that incorporate strong beliefs in the occult and ancestor reverence. The attractions are simple but impressive: Visitors to Ambua Lodge at Tari, 7,000 feet up in the Highlands, fraternize with the resident Huli wigmen tribe, a Stone Age people who paint their faces in brilliant yellow, red and white designs and wear huge wigs adorned with flowers, bits of bone and other trinkets. From Karawari Lodge, deep in the jungle, an orange barge called a "river truck" glides through hushed watery channels where egrets perform a ballet in front of the bow. Villagers who live along the river demonstrate traditional crafts such as making a thatch roof and rituals such as a "coming-of-age" ceremony for a young man. Travelers cruise the Sepik -- "the Amazon of the Pacific" -- in search of the world-renowned wood carvings, masks and other art fashioned in villages along the banks. What makes these experiences possible for ordinary travelers as opposed to National Geographic explorers is the steady growth in tourism facilities. After a day in the jungle or the rain forest, visitors can return to a bar, a large, well-cooked dinner, a comfortable cabin or hotel room. | | National hodgepodge Each tribe has its own language and traditions that are incomprehensible to the others. Only 50,000 of the 5 million inhabitants speak English, the official language. Pidgin is most common, a colorful, inventive and expressive language. What better word for a traditional festival, for example, than "singsing"? The overwhelming attractions lie in the variety of natural phenomena, from fast-flowing rivers to swamplands, active volcanoes, upland valley grasslands and extensive coral reefs. Hence, the most popular reasons to visit are such things as adventure kayaking with the Bay Area's Mountain Travel Sobek (16 days for about $3,200, excluding air travel from the United States). While some islands are for vacationers in search of fun, luxury and shopping -- Hawaii and Caribbean sun spots -- other islands are for adventure and a cultural experience. Papua New Guinea is one of those. The islands are not the garden spots of sumptuous villas to which tourists flock when the bitter winds of winter begin to blow here. Nor are they islands where big cruise ships unload thousands of passengers a day. For most Americans, the vast sweep of the Pacific from California to Australia is incomprehensible. Most are familiar with the more heavily visited outposts: Hawaii, Tahiti, Fiji, Samoa. But what about Vanuatu, Tonga, Rarotonga -- and Papua New Guinea? Untouched by mass tourism, they retain much of their fascinating, age-old culture. Papua New Guinea gained its independence in 1975. New Guinea was the last inhabited place to be explored by Europeans. Dutch settlers named it, saying its jungles reminded them of West Africa's Guinea. Around 820 living indigenous languages are spoken in Papua New Guinea -- the most spoken in one country in the world -- in part because the 5 million people have been fragmented by the rugged topography. A mountain range with peaks soaring to 14,000 feet dominates the center of the main island, and serpentine rivers rush to the sea. Getting around is not easy. The road network is minimal, and there are no railroads, so most tourists hop about in planes. One of the most authentic experiences is a cruise on the Sepik River, anchoring along the way at remote villages where homes are built on stilts and the natives are friendly, despite their well-deserved reputation as headhunters a few generations back. Wrecks and 'raskols' Madang, a backwater port on the northeast coast, is famed for some of the best diving in the world. The resort's dive shop offers a unique experience for scuba enthusiasts. Because New Guinea was the site of fierce fighting in World War II, some relics of the conflict can still be found. Among them is a B-25 Mitchell bomber that was shot down in 1943. Divers descend 60 feet in clear water and describe as "eerie" the sensation of reaching into the cockpit and turning the pilot's wheel. Tourism operators here insist that the nation's reputation for crime has been overblown. But the result is that expense, danger and exoticism have left this nation largely to the high-end adventure travelers who buy packaged deals that keep them secure and quickly shuttled through Port Moresby -- which has the only international airport -- and onto connecting flights to the resorts in Madang and Rabaul. Nature has given Papua New Guinea a terrific array of attractions to woo tourists, but the law-and-order situation is devastating. Most blame it on poor law enforcement, high unemployment in the cities and an organized banditry known locally as "raskols" (pidgin for rascals). Outside the cities, mythic dangers of the past -- that perhaps contributed to the disappearance in 1961 of 23-year-old Michael Rockefeller, son of New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, during a hunt for tribal artifacts -- ended years ago. "Nobody is going to get killed and eaten by cannibals today," says Paul Taylor, a Smithsonian anthropologist who studied cannibalism in New Guinea and believes it ended in the 1970s. But they might be scammed by a street hustler. SOURCE - BEE |
