8-Day Papua New Guinea and West Papua Expedition with Highlands Culture

Arrive at Port Moresby's Jacksons International Airport and transfer past the city to the coast, where a boat crosses in fifteen minutes to Loloata Island, a private-island resort on the reefs of Bootless Bay. The afternoon is for the water: snorkel the house reef among coral heads and reef fish, or simply watch the Coral Sea settle towards evening. The group gathers over the welcome dinner for a briefing on the days ahead.

A morning boat and a short drive return us to Jacksons for the flight into the middle of the island, up over the ridges and the clouds to Mount Hagen, at some 1,700 metres the rough-and-ready capital of the Highlands. The afternoon belongs to its markets, among the best in the country: bilum string bags in every pattern, carvings, feathers, and the full theatre of Highlands commerce. Evening settles over the Wahgi Valley.

A full day as the guests of a Highlands community. The elders make the welcome; the morning goes to ceremonial face and body painting in the clan's designs, and to preparing the Mumu, the earth oven in which pork, sweet potato, and greens cook slowly beneath hot stones. The feast is eaten together, and the afternoon runs long with music, dance, and storytelling: a sing-sing shared with you, not performed at you.

For early risers, an optional pre-dawn excursion climbs into the forest to watch birds of paradise display at first light. Then the expedition takes to the road for one of the great Highlands drives, east through the Wahgi Valley into Simbu, where Chimbu dancers painted as skeletons perform their bone-white dance of death and the mountain spirits, and on into the Asaro Valley, where the Mudmen emerge from the trees in their grey clay masks. Night falls in Goroka.

A flying day, and a long leap across the country: down from Goroka to Port Moresby, then north-west along the top of the island to Vanimo, a surf town on the Pacific coast a short drive from the Indonesian border. The evening is deliberately simple: a walk on the beach among fishing boats and surfboards, dinner by the water, and the sun going down on the last town in Papua New Guinea.

The morning belongs to the coast west of Vanimo, with the drop of Awawi Falls and a lookout over the Pacific, before the short drive to Wutung and one of the least-used international borders on Earth. We assist with every formality; on the far side, the same island becomes Indonesian Papua. The road to Jayapura runs through rainforest and coastal villages, arriving as the lights come on around Yos Sudarso Bay.

A day inside the other Papua. The Papua State Museum keeps the island's carvings, bark cloth, and material memory; the old Dutch colonial district holds its faded administrative grandeur; and the Jayapura City Tower looks out over the full sweep of Youtefa Bay. The Youtefa market is the sensory finale - smoked fish, betel nut, and mountains of sago - before the farewell dinner, eaten the local way: papeda, the glass-smooth sago porridge, with fresh-caught seafood.

The expedition closes with breakfast above the bay and the transfer to Sentani Airport. Jayapura connects onward through Indonesia - Jakarta, Bali, or the reefs of Raja Ampat for those not yet finished with the island world - or homeward. Eight days, two countries, one island: the last great frontier, crossed end to end.