Be Prepared for the Unexpected and other Papua New Guinea Warning Or Danger Tips

My camera battery ran out 3 days into our trip, and we hadn't even left the Highlands yet. (like an idiot, I'd forgotten to check battery status or bring extras).

Of course there weren't any shops up there in the Highlands and our next destination was to stay at another wilderness lodge along one of the Sepik river tributaries, so I knew my luck had run out. I could not believe I was going to be facing 2 weeks without my camera...no photos to bring back with me as a reminder of this trip....

Well, our guide must have contacted someone who contacted someone who put in a call to someone who knew someone in Port Moresby (pause for air!), because the day after I made this discovery, we were headed to the airport strip in Tari ready to take off for the next destination, when a local villager came running up to me excitedly waving his hands in the air.

I was escorted to a makeshift office where lo and behold - there was a new camera battery, sealed in its package - waiting for me to claim it before boarding the plane.

It was the talk of the airport. Everyone apparently knew about this special delivery (it must have come in with the flight from Moresby).

Needless to say, my vacation was saved by this miracle and I learned the valuable lesson about how important it is check my camera batteries and even bring an extra one along, just in case.

This is a true story. Even as I relate it, I can't believe it happened. It was what I call a strange miracle.

Miracles like this don't happen every day!

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I brought some of these home-made cigarettes back to the States with me because I found it so curious that they wrap the tobacco in newspaper....and the newspaper itself was pretty interesting (of course I couldn't understand a word).

But use caution if you actually want to try smoking them....remember that this is raw, unprocessed tobacco and extremely carcinogenic.

The locals warned us that you can get a slight buzz off of them.

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At our lodge in the Karawari (Lower Sepik Region), this little lorikeet was a big moocher! He swooped into the dining hall every morning, looking for handouts.

Obviously he got them!

Moral of the story: be on the lookout for hungry birds hoping to join you for a bit of breakfast....

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Sometimes our desire to travel overrides our sense of self-preservation.

In this case, I figured the best thing to do was to fall asleep and DREAM that I had a seat belt to buckle....

Then again, if there was to be some unforeseen accident, I suppose the loose bananas or other boxed and bagged cargo could always serve as a buffer between self and the fuselage.....

I'm sure that's what the pilots also had in mind when flying the plane.

In any event, my neighbor obviously didn't seem to be too bothered by the absence of standard safety devices.

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Here we see a sign in the airport that basically states that no beetlenut chewing is allowed. This is because the beetlenut, when mixed together in the saliva with a mustard stick, takes on a narcotic effect and many PNGers go around stoned on the stuff.

But that's not the offensive part - what annoys everyone is that the person chewing beetlenut has to eventually spit it out, and most PNGers spit wherever they feel like it, making an unsightly mess not to mention the damage and teeth rot imposed upon the person doing the chewing.

This sign also serves as a cool example of the curious "Pidgin English" widely used throughout PNG. (if you click on the photo you'll see both the pidgin version and the regular English version of the Beetlenut warning)

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I wasn't brave enough to actually take a photo of the large, bloodstained stones (very faintly stained) where some of the Middle Sepik villagers told us their parents or elders once eddied up their enemies' bodies...

I did take this photo from a distance of one such village where the natives were not at all ashamed (nor should they be, since that was part of their cultural practice) to describe how they viewed cannabilism and why they once practiced this activity...it was fascinating to hear them speak of it, really.

We learned that the villagers didn't engage in random acts of cannabilsm; rather, this was reserved for special occasions, marking the defeat of their enemy which they did by carving their bodies up and eating them - it was thought that they would assume the warrior aspect of their enemy and further subdue the enemy tribe in this way.

Every Sepik village seemed to have a stationary, carved out canoe and paddle. To announce warfare, someone would approach the canoe and knock the paddle back and forth against the insides of the canoe which resulted in a loud, echoing noise - kind of like an alarm system if you will. The sound of the canoe being beaten like this was a signal that a fight was about to break out, so get prepared.

It's been at least a generation (maybe two) since these tribes engaged in cannabilism, so we weren't scared nor did we feel threatened in any way.

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