So I thought it was time that I shared my Kokoda experience with all of you. I have some photos from the trip but I can not show some of them as they have photos of people clearly visible in them and I do not know if they would like to have their photos plastered all over the internet. Yeah, my blog is all over the internet (joking). Our journey started at 3am at our local police station where we met before catching a bus to Melbourne Airport. After waiting for hours in check-in at Virgin we finally made it to the plane (a little late but as it was Virgin's fault that we were running late they held the plane) that would take us from Melbourne Airport to Brisbane Airport where we would then rush over to the international terminal to catch our flight to Papua New Guinea. The following photos are from our flight from Melbourne to Brisbane.
The following photos are from us coming in to land in Papua New Guinea. It was our first chance to see where we would be adventuring over the next week and it looked so nice from our plane. I do not think we really saw the true mountains we would be climbing over, it looked to nice from our plane. Seriously though, Papua New Guinea is a very beautiful country
After we landed in Papua New Guinea we went through customs which was really relaxed as I ticked too boxes on the immigration form and the customs officer did not even look at it. After we made it through customs we were greeted by our PNG Trekking Adventures guide, Pam. Just outside the airport we were greeted by a group of Papua New Guineans who performed a traditional dance and song. After this we were put into vans which then drove us to our hotel. It was our first real taste of Papua New Guinea and although we were tired, we were too excited to not watch where we were going. It was so humid that we were already sweating just standing around and as there are not many road rules in Papua New Guinea (well, not road rules we could see anyway) so the ride over to our hotel was very interesting. When we arrived at the hotel we received our rooms keys and then went up to our rooms to get our bags out of our suitcases and prepare for the next day. At 4pm we had a briefing but before then we were free to visit the pool and so most of us sat out there after we had gone up to our rooms. It was very relaxing and it was a really nice day. The following photos are from the hotel. The first is of a statue in the lobby, the next is of the entrance to the hotel which was guarded and the last two are of the hotel pool and the view from one of the rooms (I did not take these photos).
At the briefing we were introduced to the ration packs we would grow to 'love' over the coming eight days as well as a brief introduction into what we would be doing over the coming days. Now the nerves were really growing but it was going to happen so it really was just the last minute jitters. The rest of the day was relaxation, preparing our stuff for the next day, having our last proper meal for a long time and then resting for the next day.
I hope to have Day 2 out soon but it is exam period for me right now which does make it a little difficult to get these out but I will try. See you soon.
