Daru music workshop, 9-19 April 2013: Travel

Last month, I traveled to Daru, the capital town of Western Province, to lead a 7-day music workshop. Traveling is always interesting. This trip was relatively simple--a Kodiak (small plane) flight from Ukarumpa to Daru. The morning of the flight was beautiful for flying, with interesting seas of misty clouds covering the Highlands as we flew west from Ukarumpa.

Highlands vista

Flights in Papua New Guinea often include stops en route at other remote airstrips. One of the three stops on the way to Daru was at Mt. Tawa, the village home of Bible translators Neil & Carol Anderson. Some of you may have read Neil's book or Carol's book about their experiences in PNG.

Neil Anderson at Mt. Tawa

Mt. Tawa airstrip is well-known in PNG as one of the most exciting. The grass airstrip is on a mountain ridge, with steep drops from all sides. It's often difficult to land there, because clouds cover it much of the day.

Mt. Tawa airstrip

This day the weather was really clear. As always at village airstrips, after we landed, the plane was greeted by a crowd of villagers, eager to check out the plane and the outsiders and, in this case, to welcome a couple of visitors we were dropping off there to work with Neil.

Group at Mt. Tawa

(In the next post I'll write about Daru and the workshop.)

After a week and a half in Daru, the Kodiak returned and picked up me and a few other colleagues who were involved in the workshop, for the return journey. Daru is an island town, just off the south coast of the main island of New Guinea. After takeoff, you see a view of Daru island, with the mainland just across the strait.

Daru (looking toward the New Guinean mainland)

Geographically, Western Province is known for the PNG's second-longest river, the Fly. It was named in 1842, when European explorers aboard the HMS Fly "discovered" it during a survey of the southern coast of New Guinea. This was my first glimpse of it.

The Fly River

On this flight, one of the stops was at Mt. Bosavi, to pick up a few Papua New Guinean Bible translators from the Kaluli language. I was interested in Bosavi because a famous ethnomusicology ethnography was written about this area. As we flew past Mt. Bosavi itself, I enjoyed looking down on waterfalls, like this one:

A Bosavi waterfall

After all the hours in the confines of a small plane, it's great to see Ukarumpa again. Here it is as the plane circles in for landing. (Our house is circled in yellow, near the middle of the picture)

Ukarumpa, Aiyura Valley