Matsungan madness

When we visited Matsungan Island, it seemed like everyone was in a fun, silly mood, which made it a little bit frustrating for me doing my questionnaires, but they were great people. One time when I asked a question about who speaks certain languages, a voice piped up in reply, “Me too”. I looked over and saw a Malaysian man sitting there, which was funny. The whole crowd that was with me started laughing hysterically and it took a while to get back to business. Later on when I was walking around the island he saw me and we had a short chat. It seems like he is a bit of a joker.

Mariela was taking photos of kids and young people, and I went over to join her, and as I approached a teenage boy came up to me, put his arm around my shoulder and posed for Mariela to take a photo of me. I got into the spirit of things and look a bit crazy in this photo too.

It was actually a bit weird for a second having a young man put his arm around me, as that is not culturally appropriate behaviour for PNG. I think this guy might have been a bit high on betelnut and/or something else.

Here are some more photos of people being crazy in front of the camera at Matsungan. (Mariela took all of these except the last one, which I took).

Today's exciting adventure!

We had a busy adventurous day today. First we hiked to a nice waterfall and then we went to a beach and went snorkelling. There is an Australian family (all adults) on holiday staying in the same unit as we are staying in on the weekends and they had the plans to do this trip and invited us to join them.

We drove to a place where we would start hiking to the waterfall. We had three local men who volunteered to be our guides. It was quite the hike! Lots of slippery rocks and tree roots. We were all so hot from hiking uphill. I wonder how this hike we did today compares with the Kokoda Trail – a lot shorter obviously, but in terms of difficulty, I'm sure it must be up there with it!

Here's a photo of us at a pretty easy part of the hike.

We were all very hot from hiking uphill so it was a relief to get to the amazing waterfall at the end of it and have a swim in the cool water.

After that we drove for an hour or so and went snorkelling at a place called East Cape and I saw lots of pretty fish. We saw a sailing canoe that had a blue tarp as its sail!

Here we are on a pier at another place.

It was a good, fun day, although now I have sore muscles from the hiking!