EM201
MT HAGEN SHOW SMALL GROUP TOUR – AUGUST 2010
13 nights Wewak, Kairiru Island, Middle Sepik, Upper Sepik (Crocodile Festival), Mt Hagen Show, Simbai, Madang Fully escorted sign-up soft adventure tour, group size minimum 8 maximum 16. The Mt Hagen Show is Papua New Guinea’s largest cultural extravaganza. The Show has its origins in colonial days when colonial administrators sought to reduce tribal fighting by promoting inter-marriage and channelling inter-tribal rivalry into positive forms of competition. Major sing-sing events like the Mt Hagen Show and Goroka Show became opportunities for tribes to gain status without bloodshed, by competing to put on the best cultural performance. The Mt Hagen Show today is still a competition, with tribal groups vying for sizeable cash prizes and of course the honour and glory that first prize at the “Hagen Show” brings to one’s tribe. The Show attracts cultural groups from all over Papua New Guinea, even from Bougainville and the Trobriand Islands. The local crowd of 50,000 mainly flock in from the Highlands provinces plus Madang and Lae as these are the only places with road access to Mt Hagen. In contrast, less than 300 overseas visitors attended the 2008 Show, so it is still definitely a “local” festival and not something put on for tourists. There are also agricultural and trade displays, health awareness programs, sideshow alley and all manner of other activities at the Show which make it the highlight of the annual calendar for the Highlands people. Some very remote villagers come to town only once per year, for the Show, so you will see quite a kaleidoscope of faces just in the spectator crowd, even before you turn your attention to the sing-sing arena. Tourists and locals with cameras are given special seats with the best view, and you will also have permission to enter the performance arena to take close-ups of the dancers. Apart from the Show itself, our tour group will also attend another, smaller sing-sing on the day before. This is held at Paiya Village about half an hour’s drive out of town, is more informal without the huge crowds, and provides an authentic village backdrop for photography, with opportunities for watching the performers putting on their make-up and body decorations before the performance. Before and after the Mt Hagen Show we visit some interesting destinations in Papua New Guinea’s northern and highlands regions: volcanic Kairiru Island, the Sepik River, exotic Simbai and PNG’s prettiest town, Madang. The Sepik River leg involves climbing in and out of canoes, a bit of walking, and sleeping in village huts, so a little agility is required. This sector now includes the Sepik Crocodile Festival at Ambunti on the Upper Sepik. This provides an opportunity to attend a rural festival crowded by locals rather than tourists. The 2009 festival was culturally spectacular – the best rural festival we have witnessed in ten years of operating. A member
of our 2008 tour group (Julie from Australia) has mounted a
photo slide show of her trip on the internet which you can
view at http://www.kodakgallery.co.uk/I.jsp?c=1iigdztx.2rju8aw2x&x=0&y=b8j9pw&localeid=en_GB |
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2010
ITINERARY DAY 1: FRI 6 AUG 2010 PORT MORESBY / WEWAK Arrive Port Moresby and connect through to Wewak. See www.airniugini.com.pg or www.apng.com for details of international flights arriving today from Brisbane, Cairns, Singapore or Kuala Lumpur (flights from Asian depart the day before and arrive early morning in Port Moresby). On arrival in Port Moresby Ecotourism Melanesia staff will greet you with a smile and a surprise gift and you will be transferred to check in for your connecting flight to Wewak. To avoid possible flight disruptions you will be booked on the first available flight to Wewak after the arrival of your international flight. If time allows between flights, our staff will take you on a short tour of Port Moresby. NB Your domestic air tickets are provided by Ecotourism Melanesia as part of the tour package and will be delivered to you on arrival or e-mailed in advance. Overnight In-Wewak Boutique Hotel (standard room, accommodation only). |
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DAY
2: SAT 7 AUG 2010 WEWAK ISLANDS Muschu is a luscious tropical isle, flat and low and covered in coconut plantations and light rainforest. The island is fringed with beautiful white sandy beaches and colourful coral reefs. We will spend about 2 hours at Muschu Island, enough time for some swimming and snorkelling, beachcombing or a stroll through the plantations. Snorkelling masks are provided. Bottled water and fresh drinking coconuts are provided. Late morning we depart Muschu and continue further offshore to Kairiu Island. Unlike Muschu, Kairiru Is a volcanic island with mountainous interior and small crater lake. The island takes about 1 hour to circumnavigate by speed boat, but today we will travel around only the east side of the island to get to Shagur village on the seaward (north) side of Kairiru Island. From Shagur you cannot see the PNG mainland – only the Bismarck Sea (next stop: Micronesia). At Shagur village
the people will await us with an enthusiastic traditional welcome
and a tropical feast for lunch.
Shagur village is literally a tropical paradise situated in luscious
green rainforest. The houses are all traditional style, made of bush
materials only. This contrasts with the inland areas of the Sepik
River where the topography is fairly flat and dry, despite the presence
of the watercourse, and cultural entertainment is not as energetic
due to the more regular tourist visits. As Ecotourism Melanesia is
currently the only tour company arranging visits to Shagur, the number
of visitors coming here is small and each visit is special for both
the village people and the visitor. The people here have a well-prepared
repertoire of bona fide cultural dances, songs and drama to perform
for visitors – one of the best village cultural experiences
anywhere in PNG. Beginning mid-afternoon and continuing into the evening, we will be treated to a cultural entertainment extravaganza with all manner of traditional singing, dancing and drama skits portraying the island legends – be prepared to split your sides over some great slapstick comedy even if you can’t understand a word of what’s going on! Dinner tonight will be a traditional-style “mumu” where food is wrapped with coconut cream in banana leaves and slow-cooked in under hot stones. Overnight village
guest house, Shagur village, Kairiru Island |
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DAY 3: SUN 8 AUG 2010
KAIRIRU ISLAND / WEWAK / SEPIK RIVER (YAMOK) By 9:00am our boats will come ashore on the beach in front of the Windjammer Beach Hotel which is a convenient place to rendezvous with our waiting vehicles. By 10:00am we’ll board our 25-seater bus (with trailing luggage vehicle), and commence our 4-hour drive from Wewak to the Sepik River. The road from Wewak to Pagwi on the Sepik River is bitumen sealed most of the way and quite a pleasant journey. First we climb steep winding curves from the steamy coastal strip to the cool forests of the undulating Prince Alexander Range. Two hours into the trip we will stop at a roadside market for a lunch of tropical fruits, cooked vegetables and delicious green coconuts to drink (pay as you go). Back on the road, we soon descend onto the savannah grasslands of the Sepik basin, passing through a number of villages before arriving at Pagwi mission station on the Middle Sepik by early afternoon. At Pagwi we transfer to our waiting motor canoes and head down-river approximately one hour to the Korogo Fishing Lake, an ox-bow lake formed by a cut-off river bend. Here we leave our canoes and walk for an hour through light rainforest to Yamok village. Visiting Yamok is well worth it as this village is probably the most beautiful on the Sepik and has seven Haus Tambarans (mens spirit houses) which is more than any other Sepik village. Very few tourists visit this village so we are assured of a warm welcome. On arrival at Yamok, we will be welcomed by a traditional “sing-sing” and then tour the village. Special permission will be given for the women in our tour party to enter the Haus Tambarans, which are strictly off-limits to local women. Overnight village guest house, Yamok (includes meals). |
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DAY 4: MON 9 AUG 2010
SEPIK RIVER (YAMOK / KANGANAMAN) Back at Kanganaman, in the late afternoon
we will observe sago being extracted from the pith of sago palms,
and learn 20 ways to cook
sago. In the evening we will sit around the men’s spirit house
and hear the elders recount tribal legends and play their bamboo
flutes and garamut drums. |
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DAY 5: TUE 10 AUG 2010
SEPIK RIVER (KANGANAMAN / AMBUNTI) Kangaman to Pagwi will take 2 hours and we will make a comfort stop here and visit a small crocodile farm. Pagwi to Ambunti will take a further 3 hours. A hot lunch will be ready for our arrival at Ambunti, the sleepy “capital” of the Upper Sepik. Ambunti is a pindrop-quiet little township with a number of small government offices, a few tiny shops and churches, an airfield and one or two minor cottage industries. The population is less than 1000. There are no streets, just grassy lanes between houses and other buildings that are used by a few tractors with open trailers for hauling loads around the station – the rest of the time people just walk because nowhere is far from anywhere at Ambunti. The township normally seems asleep during the hot days, but comes alive in the late afternoon when various football games sprout on the airstrip runway and other open spaces and draw small social crowds. There is a little “hotel” called Ambunti Lodge which caters for tourists, plus a few other guest houses run by the church missions. After lunch, spend the afternoon exploring Ambunti station and visit the venue for the crocodile festival so that you will not be disorientated in the crowds tomorrow. Our guides are available to walk with you but it is quite safe to move around the station on your own. You might meet the occasional harmless drunk warming up to the festival atmosphere but just smile and say good afternoon and keep walking, as you would anywhere. Overnight mission guest house at Ambunti |
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DAY 6: WED 11 AUG 2010
SEPIK RIVER (AMBUNTI) Crocodiles
play a major part in the lives of the Sepik people. Apart from
their centrality to spiritual beliefs, crocodiles are important
for the local diet and the village microeconomy. Everywhere in the
Sepik River basin, the crocodile is an occasional source of protein
for the village diet, and crocodile skins are sold for cash to outside
buyers. The collecting of crocodile eggs in the wild and hatching
them
in crocodile “farms” is an ongoing threat to the wild population.
WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature) is educating locals about sustainable
harvesting of wildlife resources and encouraging them to turn to alternative
sources of income such as ecotourism. The Sepik Crocodile Festival is an initiative of WWF and aims to promote controlled harvesting of the wild crocodile population. The festival takes place at Ambunti on the Upper Sepik where WWF’s conservation activities are focused, and is scheduled in August, the middle of the dry season, when the festival is least likely to be disrupted by rain. The Crocodile Festival celebrates the centrality of the crocodile in lives of the Sepik people and also provides a venue for WWF to conduct conservation awareness with locals who flood in to Ambunti from all over the Sepik basin for the festival. Village groups will perform crocodile-themed traditional dances and dramas. Sepik handicrafts will be for sale, especially crocodile carvings and crocodile tooth necklaces. The pride and joy of your souvenir collection will be a crocodile-head canoe prow if you can buy one. Sepik canoes normally have an animal totem carved into the prow and when the canoe becomes old or develops un-patchable leaks the prow is sometimes cut off with a chainsaw or axe and sold as a souvenir (about 40 centimetres long by 20 centimetres wide, and weighing about 3kg). Of course, it’s not really a tourist souvenir but a genuine cultural artifact. Fumigation and special packing will be required if you want to take a canoe prow home with you. At the 2009 festival the cultural performances were superb. Dance groups came from as far afield as the Blackwater Lakes and the far Upper Sepik. The quality of the traditional costumes was exquisite and some groups danced with live crocodiles. Amazingly, each village’s traditional dress and dance routines were very different from each other – it’s amazing that so many diverse cultures have all evolved along the same river! Some of our tour group members later commented that the Sepik Crocodile Festival far outshone the Mt Hagen Show for authenticity and photography. In fact this was the only opportunity during the tour to witness bona fide Sepik River culture as there was nothing similar from the Sepik region seen at the Mt Hagen Show later. Overnight mission guest house, Ambunti |
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DAY 7: THU 12 AUG 2010
SEPIK RIVER / MT HAGEN After lunch there will be some leisure time and then at 3:00pm we will take a two-hour tour of the Waghi Valley which is the agricultural powerhouse of the highlands. We’ll see tea and coffee plantations, market gardens and a tropical orchid display. Overnight 2.5 star motel accommodation, Mt Hagen (twin share, includes set-menu dinner and breakfast). This tour was previously priced at PGK16,200 per person twin share including all internal flights but due to the fact that our preferred hotel in Mt Hagen "The Highlander" is unable to accommodate our tour group for the Show weekend we have had to downgrade accommodation in Mt Hagen to 2.5 star motel and accordingly the tour has been re-priced at PGK15,150 per person. Previously “room only”, accommodation in Mt Hagen now includes meals. |
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DAY 8: FRI 13 AUG 2010
MT HAGEN In previous
years our tour groups commented that they enjoyed the Paiya Village
sing-sing even more than the Mt Hagen Show itself,
because the village setting made the experience (and the photography)
more natural and the smaller crowd from just the one village area
was easy to socialise with. This was the first year that the Paiya
Village sing-sing had been held the day before the Mt Hagen Show,
and it was a real winner with visitors. |
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DAY 9 SAT 14 AUG 2010
MT HAGEN SHOW The tourist grandstand has good views of the performance area and
your tourist pass (provided as part of your tour package) gives you
blanket permission to enter the performance area if you wish to take
close-up photographs. Special toilets for tourists are situated near
the grandstand. Overnight 2.5 star motel accommodation, Mt Hagen (twin share, includes set-menu dinner and breakfast).
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DAY 10: SUN 15 AUG 2010
MT HAGEN SHOW Today’s program will wind down a little earlier than yesterday
so before transferring you back to your accommodation we will make
a side trip to one of Mt Hagen’s unique attractions, the archaeological
dig site at Kuk, about 12 km outside the city. This dig site has
been nominated for World Heritage listing due to its significant
role in providing preserved archaeobotanical evidence that natives
of New Guinea developed very early (mid-Holocene period) agriculture
skills independently of other world civilisations. Overnight 2.5
star motel accommodation, Mt Hagen (twin share, includes set-menu
dinner and breakfast). |
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DAY 11:
MON 16 AUG 2010 MT HAGEN / SIMBAI Simbai is an isolated government station
in the highlands. It is located approximately halfway between Mt
Hagen and Madang. Adminstratively
the area falls within the Madang Province but culturally the people
of the Simbai area are more similar to the highlands tribes than
the coastal peoples of Madang. The area surrounding Simbai station – the
Simbai River valley to the east and the Kaironk River valley to the
west – is populated by the Kalam tribe. Archaeological digs
in this area have yielded samples of lapita indicating that occupation
of this area by the Kalam people goes back thousands of years. The
dialect spoken in this area is one of PNG’s most unusual languages,
characterised by glottal stops. The traditional culture is also unique
among Papua New Guinea’s thousand-odd tribes. Native houses
have a trademark irregular hexagon shape, men’s initiation
ceremonies feature nose-piercing and pig-killing, and on special
occasions the initiated men wear huge exotic head-dresses – the
largest in Papua New Guinea – decorated with animal skins and
furs, and the exoskeletons of hundreds of luminescent green beetles.
Just a few minutes walk from the government station brings you into
satellite villages where the local people still live in grass huts,
still wear traditional dress and still hunt game and harvest fruit
and vegetables from the forest for their diet. Overnight Kalam Guest House, Simbai |
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DAY 12:
TUE 17 AUG 2010 SIMBAI Overnight Kalam Guest House, Simbai |
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DAY 13:
WED 18 AUG 2010 SIMBAI / MADANG Overnight Jais Aben Resort, Madang |
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DAY 14: THU 19 AUG 2010
MADANG / PORT MORESBY If you have time in Port Moresby between flights Ecotourism Melanesia
vehicles and drivers are available for your last-minute touring,
souvenir shopping or errands before we farewell you at the airport.
Places you might like to visit:
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Wewak
Town
