The pilot’s safety briefing was interrupted by a loud squeal. “Was that a pig? If it makes a mess you’ll have to clear it up when we reach Hagen” he said indignantly to the woman with a large bulge under her coat. The pig squealed repeatedly as we took off but was quiet for the rest of the 45 minute flight – another small incident in travel around Papua New Guinea, the land of the unexpected. The previous flight to Tari had been over 4 hours late: “As the weather was unusually fine, we took the opportunity of using the aircraft to visit poorly-served airstrips before sending it back towards Hagen” the fat controller eventually explained. At Tari we watched the Spirit Dancers, Huli wigmen dressed up in all their finery with head-dresses of Birds-of-paradise feathers and cloaks of Cuscus skins, performing their dance to help overcome problems such as serious illness. Higher up, in the moss-covered forest, a King-of-Saxony Bird-of-paradise performed a similar dance, bouncing up and down on a thin branch, swaying his bizarre elongated head feathers and singing just as tunelessly as the Hulis.

The Central Highlands Highway was now open to regular traffic, thanks to recent patrolling by police vehicles. It had effectively been closed for years by the presence of “rascals” who stopped and robbed any who dared to use it. Now it was possible to drive from Tari to Hagen in 8 hours instead of at least 20 on the safe route. We took part of this when we travelled from Hagen to Lake Kutubu, mainly in the back of a lorry masquerading as a Public Motor Vehicle. The “5 hour” journey took 8 hours and included another pig on board, very well behaved this time. We climbed up and down mountains, mainly through a semi-cultivated landscape, dotted with patches of forest, before dropping down through hills covered with young forest. My backside felt thoroughly tenderised after bouncing up and down on the wooden plank cum seat as we hit numerous potholes. We got off at dusk and had to wait for a boat to take us to Tubo Lodge on an island in the picturesque lake. The jovial local headmaster explained the meaning of time: “I know that if you say you will meet me at 7.00, you will be there at 7.00, not 6.59 or 7.01, but if a Papuan says 7, he will arrive at 9.”

We took a birding trip to the mainland with bare-footed Robert as guide. We had a good time until it started raining in earnest, so we returned to where the canoe had been left. “The others have taken it to the village, we will walk there.” “How long will that take?” “It depends how fast we walk” – we had heard this before. It took an hour, without stopping, as we slithered along the muddy path which looked as though it had not been used for weeks – a wrong assumption as we met four children who were walking to a village some 10 km away where the school was. They would live there during the week and walk home for the weekend. I was happy to accept Robert’s helping hand, such as when we crossed streams on slippery rocks, but my companion stubbornly refused all offers. He fell into one stream, soaking both feet – no, I didn’t say that. In the village, the men played touch-rugby and the children touch-basket ball. The men all lived in a single longhouse, each with their own fire next to their bed, and the women and children in their own family houses.

After returning to the lodge, we proceeded to the other side of the lake to see the bleached skulls and bones of the locals’ ancestors, laid out on a ledge beside a chalk cliff. Their glory had been to be killed by the Japanese in World War II. Later, we ate delicious small crayfish, speared by boys standing precariously at the front of a small wooden canoe. One of the local women had a fever, probably malaria; we gave her some pills to help – the nearest pharmacy was at least 6 hours away. In the early hours I spent a long time in the rain trying to see a very rare bird, Wallace’s Owlet-Nightjar, which called only once or twice every 10 or 15 minutes. He won, I had to leave at 05.30, to go home. The first step was to get the guys out of bed to take me by canoe to the other end of the lake, an hour’s journey in the rain. There was no sign of the vehicle to the airport: “The man allotted to arrange this forgot to do it”, said Penny in a matter of fact way. We walked it in 45 minutes, in time for the 30 minute flight to Hagen, followed by an hour in a jet to Port Moresby, 6 hours to Singapore and 12 hours to Heathrow, where my bag failed to appear, one hour to St Pancras, 3 hours to Sheffield and bus home, only to find there was no-one in and my key was in my bag still in Singapore…