PNG - Land of the Unexpected

This is an official tourism slogan here, and it's perfect! The locals love it, and pull it out cheerfully and sarcastically at every opportunity.

We had a good drive today out to the west of Wewak, to a village called But. The road is rougher than I had expected, with several stream crossings and one big washout where the locals were busy with road works. We got there after a couple of hours - it's a lovely spot, with a beautiful beach and a Japanese WWII memorial. Our survey marker is on the lawn between the church and the police office, a safe location with good sky exposure for the GPS satellites.

Normally the village is tiny and quiet, but this week the beachfront is a mass of tents and shelters, with several hundred people in the village for the Momase Catholic Youth Forum. They've built a temporary stage, and a shelter about 30 x 30 m to give the audience shade... which is right on top of the mark, of course. There's really no practical way we could have checked this beforehand - the village has no phone, not even a short-wave radio.

The forum will be there until Sunday, so we've abandoned trying to measure it for the moment.

Tomorrow we'll go back to the east to recover the equipment from Angoram and Tring; it should be routine, but this is the land of the unexpected!

lukim yu,

Dan