From the Sepik to the highlands: on foot through Papua New Guinea

On the Sepik

In May 2026 we flew close to the Sepik, one of Papua New Guinea's major rivers. There we met our two local contacts and arranged a Land Rover and fuel. Five hours took us through the jungle, then we switched to a small boat. Via a village and another stretch by boat we reached a small hut on the riverbank that had been built as a hunting lodge.

We stayed there for two days and hunted. We ate flying fox, bandicoot and snake. Flying fox tastes strong and gamey, because the animals eat no meat, only fermented fruit. Bandicoot and snake, by contrast, tasted mild, and the snake was close in taste to a dried sausage. Against the many mosquitoes we smoked tobacco leaves rolled in newspaper.

When we wanted to move on, there was at first no boat available, then the motor of one we found turned out to be broken. Eventually someone came by with their own boat, and we spent two days traveling down the river on it until we reached a village with a road connection. We stayed the night there. In the middle of the night two men carried a live, bound crocodile past us. When we asked, the villagers explained that hunting crocodiles is part of their culture, but that night was about something else: someone in the village had recently died through the actions of others, and the family of the deceased had demanded compensation from those responsible, in the form of a crocodile from the river. That night the animal had been caught. The villagers would not tell us the exact circumstances of the death.

Into the highlands

From there we continued to the coast and spent the night in a hotel. Accommodation in Papua New Guinea is generally expensive, and the price difference between basic and better places is small, so we chose the better hotel. There we happened to meet a German foreign correspondent who was traveling privately.

We then traveled for several days into the country's central highlands to search for a plane wreck we had researched in advance. From there we planned to hike down to the coast on a route that Japanese troops had made passable during the Second World War.

A bus took us into a village where we met a pastor who, alongside his church work, is also involved in gold mining. We stayed with him for two days and attended his service. It was announced to last half an hour, but actually lasted four hours, in a language we did not understand, with a very intense, emotional style of preaching. At the end we were blessed for our journey. The pastor initially wanted to send five escorts with us, after negotiation it came down to two, for which we paid a small amount.

We reached the wreck, a four engine American B-17 that had made a forced landing on a mountainside meadow and was well preserved. We climbed in and looked at the wreck from the inside. It rained heavily that day, and we waited it out there for a while, soaked through.

The detour

The descent from there to the coast stretched over several days and passed roughly three villages. There we helped the residents pan for gold in the river, which the villagers enjoyed. The trail was barely visible in places. While our escorts walked it easily in flip flops, we kept slipping. At one point one of us slid about five meters down a slope and ended up hanging upside down in a blackberry bush, swearing, but glad not to have hit a tree.

One of our escorts spoke very good English and explained on the way why we were not walking the full planned route. About ten years earlier, Australians had walked the same path with two local porters. At a spot where they had pitched their tent, they were attacked by men from the forest. The Australians survived with machete wounds, but the two porters were killed. Since then an unresolved conflict has existed between the families involved. Our escorts belonged to one of the two families, the next village on the original route to the other. There was a risk our escorts would be attacked there, so we chose the other route instead.

The escort who had explained this to us seemed weighed down for a long time afterward. We wondered whether it was also because we were moving slowly and kept losing the path. In the end he explicitly apologized that this story had kept us from walking the planned route. We assured him that everyone's safety mattered to us more than the original route.

Back in Port Moresby

From the coast we traveled back to Port Moresby by boat, flight and bus, where we stayed for seven days. Insect bites that one of us had scratched open had become infected on one leg, swollen and full of pus. Most of the time we stayed in bed and caught up on sleep. The hotel there had a large breakfast buffet, with a wall full of donuts, papaya, kiwi and pineapple jam, waffles and bacon.

For a few days the three of us rented a Land Cruiser and drove around Port Moresby. Many people there chew betel nut, which turns their saliva red, and when spat out it often ends up in plastic bottles along the roadside. One of these bottles was run over by a car, and the red liquid splashed onto our white Land Cruiser, right through the open window.

On the flight from Singapore to Port Moresby we had met a flight attendant from the Papua New Guinean airline, who wished us well before the trip. On a domestic flight after our return we ran into the same flight attendant again. She was visibly happy, took photos with us and asked how the trip had gone.

Even after we got back, my leg stayed infected for several more weeks. It also took me a few more weeks to fully recover. I am taking a break from this kind of trip abroad for the coming months.