Goroka (post by Bill & Liz)

We had a day trip to Goroka which is about a 2 hour drive from Ukarumpa. The road is sealed and in pretty good condition, except for one or two places where it has subsided and is in need of major repair. There is dramatic scenery along the road which you can see in the following picture.

There are many villages and roadside stalls along the way.

The locals travel by PMVs (Public Motor Vehicles), which sometimes looks a bit scary. Hold on tight!

Goroka has some large supermarkets and second hand stores, along with government buildings. Of course there is the market too, where the white people stand out.

Kainantu (post by Bill & Liz)

Kainantu is the nearest town to Ukarumpa. It has shops and a market for all your shopping needs. It is on the Highlands Highway, where the road splits to go to Goroka or Lae. To our Western eyes it is quite a messy place.

Kainantu shopping precinct:

We visited several shops, the Cultural Centre and the market. We feel very conspicuous walking among the local people and they have no inhibitions about staring at the white strangers.

The market had separate areas for bilums and clothing and there was some undercover fruit and vegetables with sellers sitting at tables. Others were sitting on the open ground with their produce on a plastic sheet in front of them.

Kainantu market:

Ukarumpa market (post by Bill & Liz)

Three days a week, local villagers come in to Ukarumpa to sell their home grown produce at the market. It starts at 6am and finishes at 8am, so you have to be up early!

All sorts of things are sold there, such as the familiar bananas, spring onions, tomatoes, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, strawberries and more. Plus there are some more unusual items like: strange green leafy things, which can be used like spinach, various types of kaukau (sweet potato), sugarfruit, black raspberries, 'pitpit' and some other unknown things.

Here's Liz and Julie checking out the strawberries:

Several ladies with their produce for sale:

Finally arrived! (post by Bill & Liz)

On Tuesday, we got up at 4am departed Melbourne on the 7am flight to a very wet Brisbane. After a slightly delayed flight from Brisbane, we arrived in a hot and humid Port Moresby. As we travelled from the airport to the guest house, we saw many people sitting by the side of the road selling betelnut and lots of people milling around doing nothing.

The next day we flew to Ukarumpa. Liz was a bit apprehensive in the small plane, but thought it was good after we were safe on the ground! The picture below shows a view of the mountains from the plane.

Here we are finally at Ukarumpa, which is much cooler than Port Moresby:

Mum and Dad visiting on Wednesday!

Mum and Dad are visiting me and they arrive in Ukarumpa on Wednesday, after staying overnight at Port Moresby for one night. I think they are going to be posting on my blog about their visit, so keep checking over the next week to see what they've written! (After we go to Madang they may not be able to post until they get back to Australia).

Making 'gogii' with a giant mortar and pestle

One of the traditional Teop dishes is called 'gogii'. They can make it with cassava or other root crops, but when we were there, they made it with cooking bananas (not sweet bananas). Firstly they peeled and boiled the bananas, then they put them into something which is like a massive mortar and pestle, and they smash the banana up. I guess you could probably do the same thing in a pot with a potato masher. Here's a picture of me having a go at it:


This is what it looks like inside the big mortar type thing:


After you have smashed the bananas, you twist the stick (or pestle) around and hope that the mashed bananas will stick to it. That didn't always happen even for the local girls. Here is a girl who managed to do it successfully:


You take the stick with the banana on it to a man, and you get the rest of the banana out of the thing with your hands and take it to him, and he rolls it into balls. It is traditional custom for the man to do this part of the preparation, but women can do it if there is no man around.


Then the man puts balls together into banana leaves and they put coconut cream in with the banana balls.


Then they fold the banana leaves to wrap it all up, and they cook it overnight. In the morning it is ready to eat, and this is what it looked like:


It tasted good too, especially the coconut cream taste that went through it all. We didn't try a cassava version of gogii, but I think that I'd probably like it better than the banana version. Cooking bananas aren't all that exciting.

Namatoa – An amazing villageǃ

While we spent most of our time in the Teop area in one village at the coast, one time we travelled up the mountain and stayed in Namatoa village for two nights. It took us 4 hours to walk up the mountain, but apparently the Namatoa villagers can do it in 1½-2 hoursǃ

Namatoa is a fairly big village in seemingly the middle of nowhere. It does have a road that goes up the mountain to it, but it is in terrible condition. We walked along the road, and its condition even made walking difficult, but they still somehow manage to get vehicles up there when it's not too wetǃ

Namatoa has spectacular ocean views. In this photo, the land that you can see in the distance is Buka Island:

Another view from Namatoa, with some closer land in sight:

The views aren't the most amazing thing about Namatoa though. The most amazing thing is that it has a plumbed water supplyǃ The toilet we used flushed like normal, with the press of a button, and there was even a little sink for washing your hands in the toilet outhouse. There were also showers where you turn a tap on and water comes down from above. It was really nice to have a normal shower, rather than tipping water from a bucket over me. Here's a photo of the shower we used, hope you can see the pipe clearly.

On the other hand, the floor of the shower wasn't all that spectacular...

At one stage, the village must have been even more amazing, with an electricity supply. There are electricity poles and wires going throughout the village, but they have not been functioning for a very long time. In this photo you can see some of the village houses and an electricity pole and wire.