On a Saturday back in November, Daniel and I planned during the week to head out of town to have a BBQ by a river with his family. It had been a while since I had spent time with Daniel’s family. Dan is a national Engineer with MAF and is one of my closet friends here. Sandra his wife works in accounts as well. As I did my weekly shopping that Saturday morning, I grabbed supplies for the afternoon. Early in the afternoon I drove out to the Kagamuga compound to pick them up. They also had grabbed supplies that morning too, so we had plenty for the five of us.
1. La Bestia in it’s natural habitat
We headed out along the Highlands Highway and I released that the Landcruiser had not been past Kagamuga since I have had it and was really the first trip out of town region since a MAF ministry program last year. As we drove along, there was rain clouds in the horizon and as we got closer it started to rain. The boys were really excited to be driving out to the river, especially Timothy. First off we drove to Kindeng which is around 20-25 minutes from Kagamuga to have a look at some land for sale.
2. Dan & Sandra cooking
It continued to rain and we headed back down the highway to a river called wara (river in Tok Pisin) Tuman. This was our planned destination to BBQ by the river, but there was no longer a driveable road down, only very soft sand (which looked like a good place to get bogged). So we continued to head back down the highway towards town for a while. We reached a turn off, which we took and continued down a road, which took us to a river called wara Komum. I drove as far as I could along the river and we found a spot. The spot was across the river, so it meant walking across a cold 0.5-1m strong flowing river with our stuff.
As soon as we got there the boys went for a swim, we carried stuff across to the other side. As we got setup on the rocky beach, Daniel got a fire going to cook on. Daniel and Sandra took care of the cooking while I help prepare. We had sausage sandwiches which was really good and enjoyed the outdoors. We had beaten the rain clouds coming back, but they were lurking around and it held off while we were there.
3. Wara Komun
The boys continued to swim and play in the sand after a late lunch joined by Sandra. While Daniel and myself chilled out on the rocky beach and talked. It was just a refreshing time to get out of town and the atmosphere of Hagen to be in the wilderness. The water was quite cold and still having a cold I didn’t want to try swimming, it was hard even for a sick Aquaman. What I liked about it was that you could start off up river travel down river by the current, only thing missing was a sandy beach (normally sand gets washed away if there is some or is sold, so most rivers in the Western Highlands have rocks). Crossing back to the car was again difficult, the river having a strong current, plus being cold (water running down off mountains is quite refreshing) and the rocks being slippery.
4. Daniel, Gregory, Timothy & Sandra
We packed up, dried off and headed back home. It was a great afternoon just to get out of town and spend time with friends. Even though it was only a few hours, it was a refreshing time. There is not a lot of things to do in Mt Hagen, but there is plenty to do and see outside of Hagen you just have to make it happen.
December 13th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
Looks, like lot’s of fun, “la bestia” hahaha.
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