Tuesday ravel

Press, 1 December 1987, Page 44

Tuesday ravel

SUSAN KUROSAWA cruises up the Sepik River in style to explore some of New Guinea’s remotest villages.

A cruise along New Guinea’s mighty Sepik River is more than just a pleasant travel experience. It’s a journey of discovery to the very heart of the country’s rich and varied tradition of arts and crafts. This caramel-coloured stretch of water is flanked by myriad villages where the age-old arts of carving, weaving and jewellery making are carried out according to time-honoured methods. There are various ways to tackle the Sepik. If you’re the sort of traveller who thrills to the thought of paddling a canoe and sleeping under the stars, you’d do well to investigate an expedition by smalt boat from Angoram on the lower Sepik or Timbunke on the middle section of the river. Maps and details of hiring a canoe for a shoestring Sepik sojourn are described in full in the excellent Lonely Planet publication “Papua New Guinea: A Travel Survival Kit.” The book is now in its third printing and a fourth, fully updated version is due for release in April 1988. If, like me, your idea of adventure is a one-star hotel and a menu in a foreign language, I suggest you consider the very comfortable Melanesian Explorer for a Sepik River cruise of five to 16 days duration. This roomy expeditionary vessel is based at the flower-filled holiday resport of Madang and she accommodates up to 34 passengers in basic but clean twinbunked cabins. Melanesian Explorer cruises along at a perky 12 knots and most of the sailing is done at night so the days are left free for visiting a selection of small Sepik townships. The time on board is spent lounging on the upper deck, preferably with a can of frosty South Pacific Lager in hand, or dipping into the excellent library with its extensive selection of books and magazines on Papua New Guinea. There’s a video machine in the lounge-cum-library and movies are shown each evening after dinner. “First Contact,” which details the first meetings between New Guinea highlanders and white men, and “Trobriand Islands Cricket,” with its coverage of crazy cricket games played with coconut balls and no fixed number of participants, are the pick of the on-board videos. Most of the villages visited on shore excursions are perched on the riverbanks so the crossing by speedboat tender takes just a few moments. One exception is AibOm, a pottery-pro-ducing settlement reached through the reed-thick Chambri Lakes. Our intended one-hour crossing turned into an afternoon of nightmarish navigation. Chunks broken off from the soggy banks had formed floating islands which blocked our way in half-a-dozen

places. Snowy-white egrets and cackling cockatoos showed great interest in our plight and an amiable black dog from a nearby village swam out to| sniff around the situation, wagging his wet tail and generally getting in the way. But our frustrating excursion to Aibom was well rewarded. The little clay pots from this village are adorned with gargoyle-like human faces and painted in shades of buttercup, cream and black. This pottery is sunbaked, not properly fired, so great care is required to get your purchases safely home. It should be mentioned that the Air Nuigini people • in Port Moresby are quite used to passengers turning up looking like mobile markets. It does help, however, to have your purchases properly wrapped at one of the big arts and crafts stores in Moresby before boarding your aircraft home. At the end of each day we would pile up our treasures in the main corridor of Melanesian Explorer. There were wooden canoe prows shaped like crocodile snouts, carved masks and volifotuous fertility figures, wooden animals with tufts of straw hair and startled shell eyes, chunky strands of shell and bone jewellery, and a colourful selection of bilums, the typical New Guinea carry-all bags woven from pandanus palm roots and dyed in smudgy shades of pink, purple, blue and green. These hand-crafted, crudely beautiful items are available at peppercorn prices. Art gallery owners and serious collectors from around the world have swooped up most of the old, valuable pieces, but the casual collector can still pick up a formidable array of excellent arts and crafts. The villagers have no change so you need to convert your money to lots of small kina notes before you leave Madang. And there’s a curiously naive “first” and “second” price system. A price will be quoted and then you are expected to enquire about the second price. Several kina immediately tumble; there’s even a “third” price for more costly items. Other village attractions include the impressive haus tambarans, or spirit houses, with their cathedral-style soaring roofs and ceremonial carvings, and spirited sing-sings performed by warriors proudly wearing extravagant headdresses of coveted cassorwary feathers and bird of paradise plumes. And, of course, the village people themselves. By mid-1988 the Melanesian Explorer will be replaced by the ultraluxurious catamaran Melanesian Discoverer which will come with a spa on deck, fully private facilities and all the appointments of a floating five-star hotel. For the moment, however, a laid-back cruise on the quaint, woodpanelled Explorer provides all the comfort and civilities you need to journey slowly up the Sepik.