Travels in New Guinea

Exhausted after nine hours of walking with our backpacks, we descend to the Kali Mugi, a tributary of the Baliem river, and enter the village of Syokosimo. Kanak knows of a place we might stay for the night. Soaked in sweat, boots tarred in mud, Nadya and I look forward to a dip mandi and "teh manis," a bucket wash and a cup of sweet black tea. Shadowed by kids yelling "Gula! Gula!" (Candies! Candies!), we arrive at the door of a "honai," a traditional hut with a grass roof. Smoke billows from the doorway. "Wa, wa! Wa, wa!" A skinny woman in a red headscarf and grimy pleated skirt seizes our hands and shakes them. A man - her husband perhaps - lays out some axes, resembling adzes, on the ground for our inspection. An older man, wearing nothing but a coronet of black feathers and a penis gourd, drifts over. We are the centre of attention. It is Day 4 of our trek through Dani country in the central highlands of West Papua. Our guide is a diminu...

The motorized outrigger canoe drops anchor, and Nadya and I dive over the side with our snorkels. "Sampai jumpa lagi," shouts helmsman Erick Farwas, the Papuan hosting us on Pulau Wundi, one of 36 islands in the Padaido atoll 500 kilometres west of Jayapura. Catch you later. The current carries us along the reef and into the company of a thousand fish: yellow and black Moorish Idols, rainbow Parrotfish nipping at spiky coral fans, Surgeon and Unicorn fish nudging along in shoals, Clown fish gawping at us from forests of sea anemones, a two-metre black-tip reef shark patrolling the depths. From time to time, we dive and search the folds of brain coral for the speckled head of a Moray eel or poke our noses under a ledge for zebra-striped lobsters waving their antennae. I wonder what the fish make of us. Blundering, finless aberrations hardly to be taken seriously? A school of barracuda cruises by unperturbed. In the Raja Ampat archipelago, West Papua's prime dive spot...

La fierte des gens de la Papouasie orientale creve les yeux. Quand on leur demande d'ou ils viennent, ils n'hesitent pas a dire qu'ils sont des "orang Papua", des papous. Ils portent des chandails et des sacs "I love Papua", mais ne cherchez pas un drapeau Papou car ils sont interdits sous peine d'emprisonnement. Dans la region de Manokwari, les gens ont beaucoup soufferts a cause de leur soutien au mouvement pro-independence. Des villages entiers ont ete severement punis pour leur appui. Les parents d'une de nos connaissances ont evite la mort en se cachant dans la foret lors d'un raid de l'armee dans leur village lorsqu'ils etaient jeunes et ils n'ont pas oublie. Aujourd'hui, ils se tiennent loin du mouvement et ils ne sont pas les seuls. Malgre tout, ils restent fiers de leurs racines et semblent maintenir leurs langues et leurs traditions. Depuis notre arrivee, on a visite trois regions (Raja Ampat, les monts Arfak et Bi...

Nadya and I sit alone in the dark. We're in a leafy hide, faces pressed to 'portholes' punched in the side. Our view is of a clearing and of a pandanus cone balanced on a tripod of sticks. It is a massive fruit, bright red and phallic, twice the length and girth of an English cucumber. Our quarry is 19cm long with a lumped brown head, green belly, yellow back and wings, and blue legs. Jutting from its rear are two wires resembling coiled springs. This is the male Magnificent Bird of Paradise, and, according to Pratt and Beehler, it utters "a rapid rolling series of -8 loud, downslurred churr notes, growing louder and more insistent" (Birds of New Guinea). We have been in New Guinea a month now, choosing to discover Keptang Burung, the Bird's Head peninsula, at the extreme western end (of the Indonesian half) first. One of our motives for visiting Papua was to behold the unique and quixotic Birds of Paradise, of which Pratt and Beehler list twenty-nine. The...