Kokopo, Papua Nwe Guinea

We all made it safely in Papua New Guinea. 

Dad & Sara arrived last Thursday into Kokopo and their nephew/cousin Tim & partner Kate arrived Friday morning.  Kokopo is the town right next to Rabaul, where the volcano erupted in '94 and destroyed the city of Rabaul, so people sometimes say they're going to Rabaul, but what they really mean is Kokopo, cause the airport doesn't exist anymore & the volcano still smokes today!

We had quite an adventure our first day out, we took a PMV (public motor vehicle, aka a minu bus van) to Rabaul to check out the volcano ash.  We ended uyp having to walk 2 miles from the last bus stop to the Rabaul hotel for lunch (one of two hotels left in the city, which during the volcano explosion they stayed to keep the place safe) and it's a rather depressing state, with the foundations of houses but no roof on any of them & hardly any people around.  After lunch we decided to go see General Yamomoto's bunker, which supposedly had a map on the ceiling.  It started to rain & the sky was rather black, but we headed in that direction & along the way picked up some local children who showed us right to where we wanted to be, which we wouldn't have found without them cause it's so dilapidated.  It was SUPER cool!  But on the way back to the PMV stop (ya know 2 miles back) we got caught in torrential down pour, so by the time we were at the stop we were SOAKED!!

After waiting for 20 minutes Kate went to check into other options.  Turned out she found out the road washed out & so now "buses" (mini vans really) running, so we used my dad as an excuse to get a ride in the back of a pick up truck.  Kate knows the local Pidgin language, so she convinced this guy to take us back cause "the poor old white man needs his evening medicine" (this cracked me up so much I had tears running down my face, cause anyone who's met my dad know's he's in great physical health, but the PNGian man didn't know that) so after an hour long ride in the bed of a pick up truck we made it back to the hotel we were staying at.  On the bakc of the pick up we met a great girl who told us a story about how missionaries got eaten by the locals many years ago - I'm going to write a book called Tim & Kate's Outrageous Adventures, cause it's impossible not to have crazy things like this happen in a country like this!

Thank goodness the locals are friendly & helpful or we'd probably still be waiting at the bus stand, cause the road was washed out & had a raging river in another section for a few days! 

The weather is very hot & humid & of course there is not A/C, we're lucky to have electricity throughout the night to keep the fans going.  We're having a great time, I think dad might not have been prepared for it quite as much as he thought, but he's taking it all in stride & keeps on smiling.

Now we're in Kaveign at Tim & Kate's house, where today it's been pouring rain all day long - thank goodness we did the laundry yesterday!