Making Friends in the Highlands and other Papua New Guinea General Tips

Favorite Thing: I loved the Highlands people....they were ferocious and tender, strange and warm, and mostly they were really friendly and unaffected.

As two women traveling, we were never once harassed or approached by any of the men - in fact I found it odd that we never even earned a second glance. I think it was because we were oddities in their world, not the other way around.

Fondest Memory: My fondest memory is when these two men agreed to pose with me and they were very sober about it....as though it were somehow very important. They were so dignified.

I can't recall why they were so small, even for the Tari people (who are somewhat shorter than the average European)...I can only remember that they belonged to some special tribe...probably a kind of pygmy tribe of some sort.

They were very sweet and showed me inside their huts...all kinds of cassuary bones (a large bird indigenous to PNG) and feathers and spears and so forth...

Note: Click on photo and observe the toes

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