Dukduks, dolphins and dancing

I was very sad to say goodbye to Madang. It is a great place and I have enjoyed my time here immensely. If you have to leave though, then not a bad way to do it is to pop into Rabaul on the island of East New Britain, and then Nusa Lik island in New Ireland on the way home. They are off to the north of the PNG mainland, heading towards the Solomons and they are quite incredible. There is very little tourism yet they offer amazing landscapes, culture and wildlife.

Fo ur of us (fourpela white meris from Madang) headed off to ENB via Port Moresby. Having lunch at the Gateway Hotel near POM airport en route was very exciting for us and we revelled in the simple pleasures of a decent Caesar salad, a laksa and some reasonable coffee, and as soon as we hit Kokopo in East New Britain we knew we were going to like it. It definitely felt safer than Madang, and actually had a functioning provincial government which delivered roads without potholes, an absence of betelnut spit stains on the ground, some decently maintained buildings, and a market that was organised into different sections with signposts – amazing after the shemozzle of Madang!



We stayed in Kokopo, a pretty recently developed town which grew rapidly when nearby Rabaul was devastated in the mid 90s by the dual explosions of Tavurvur and Vulcan volcanoes on opposite sides of the bay. Vulcan erupted for ‘only’ a month, and that side of town is coming back to life, but the main old town was and continues to be subjected to ash from Tavurvur (‘the big stink’) which steams almost constantly, and last spewed out acidic ash on the town as recently as 3 weeks ago. It is a stunning place, but eerie to see the remains of the buildings which collapsed under the weight of the ash (the Rabaul Hotel is still operating and is one of the few buildings saved thanks to the efforts of its staff who swept the ash off its roofs for days). The vault of what used to be the main bank also remains; its reinforced walls an enduring advert to somebody’s construction skills. The forests of dead trees, black dirt and smoking mountain are in stark contrast to the busy harbour where boats from around the world still dock with their goods or to launch their goldmining expeditions.


We hired a boat and sailed to the base of Tavurvur. The trip was a delight – I have never seen so many dolphins, dozens and dozens of them around our boat in every direction, then the looming presence of the volcano belching clouds of white smoke, steaming water and bubbling beach; local islanders harvesting megapode eggs in deep hand-dug sand trenches which could collapse in on them at any moment (there are frequent deaths as the holes collapse and the men are buried alive); red sea water; Japanese tunnels and abandoned artillery on the beaches of smooth black sand. And not another tourist around.




As our boat pushed off the shore where the men collect the megapode eggs, one of them climbed up high then mimed a dukduk dance, and shook his stick at us while making high-pitched shrieks and laughing. It was brilliant.


Two of our number, plus Henry our guide climbed halfway up the volcano until they had to turn back (they had reached a hot spot and it was getting quite dangerous), whereas Liz and I decided a quarter of the way up was enough for us in our bare feet. Soft ash is pretty hard to climb it turns out…


Another ENB highlight was the dukduk dancers we twice encountered on the streets by chance, the iconic grass-suited, conical-masked representations of the Dukduk God: after a few days there I started to ‘see’ them myself in the shapes of the local trees.
East New Britain and New Ireland both still use shell money in addition to paper currency and there is even a bank where you can exchange your shells for Kina. It feels a world away from Moresby’s bustle.