Possums, Anyone? (August 18th)

Joseph, looking for a superb bird of paradise that we have been tracking for over an hour.

It’s 10pm, Mom and Dad, do you know where your children are?

Probably not, but in an exciting and unexpected turn of events, Ms. Cupcake and I headed deep into the jungle with Joseph after a delicious dinner (sautéed chicken in a passion fruit sauce) to search for possums and tree kangaroos. With headlamps and large flashlights, we set up climbing up Mt. Rondon. After a bit more than an hour, Joseph saw some nuts on the ground that had been gnawed by possums. He flashed his light overhead and, sure enough, two possums moved about, annoyed at our disturbance.

The jungle at night. You can't see the possum in this photo, but it is there.

It was the perfect last day in PNG. We spent the whole thing in the jungle with Joseph tracking animals and birds. Throughout the day we saw five different birds of paradise, countless lorikeets, parrots and honey-eaters and eventually, the possums. We hiked more than 12 miles through both trails and jungles as he scurried from one spot to the next to make sure that we not only saw each animal, but got an award winning photo.

This was never more true than in our search for the Superb Bird of Paradise (this is the black one with the bright blue chest that is in Planet Earth). There were four in a specific area of jungle that Joseph knew well. As he heard one call out, he would dart off of the trail into pure bush and we would follow, bags and camera in tow. Through mud, branches, steep descents and over streams we ran to try to catch the perfect shot of the bird. After a couple of hours, we finally got it. We watched it dance around for a while on a tree and then it afforded a great photo attempt. We were happy just in the pursuit – it was good exercise and quite exhilarating – but try telling Joseph that.

Superb bird of paradise

Papuan lorakeet

Stephanie's Astrapia

We spent time in his jungle. He created the landscape through his carved trails to the secret bits that he shows only to those who spend a lot of time with him as we did since he is then afforded the time to search for the more special stuff. He walked us through the orchid garden he created with great pride. During only a few months, he carried six trees at a time for replanting in the garden and then harvested orchids to plant on their trunks. The display is beautiful and even offers two ponds and a waterfall!

Joseph does all of this out of pure passion. He complained repeatedly about the state of his trail and his garden because they were not perfect. He wants to build a few more trails as well, to take people to some other great birding areas on the mountain and to a huge waterfall, but he just doesn’t have the time or the help to do it. He loves his work so much that he even works gathering orchids and observing the birds on many of his days off, but he still doesn’t have enough time to do everything that he would like to make Rondon Ridge just perfect for nature enthusiasts of all ages and abilities.

Our last lunch in PNG - pumpkin quiche

I admire Joseph a great deal. He is completely self-taught. He doesn’t even know all of the names of the orchids in his garden but tries his best to learn when he can (Ms. Cupcake and I are going to send him a book). His ambition and passion are unbound and when you hear him speak of his jungle, it is like a father speaking about his son. We became very friendly throughout the day and exchanged addresses, etc. to stay in touch. He wants to send bilum bags to us just because and actually gave us one of his treasured birding books as a present before we left. We really resisted because he has so few resources, but he positively insisted. We will really miss Joseph Ando.

As I hiked down the forest steps this evening contented with my possum viewing, I thought about just how wonderful our trip to PNG had been. We had been so excited about going that I felt it was going to be very difficult for the trip to actually live up to its expectations. That it did in spades. 

Blending the old and the new

The cemetery in Michael's village

Mt. Hagen is PNG’s third largest city and one of its most dangerous. That said, the city itself is surrounded by beautiful rolling countryside filled with farms and gardens. The Waghi valley is surrounded on all sides by the Kubor Mountain Range providing dramatic vistas from every angle. On each side of Mt. Hagen city lives a different tribe of people speaking a different language.

Jen and I are a bit cultured out at this point and definitely wanted to focus more on the wildlife and hiking. That said, we knew that we did need to spend at least a day exploring the culture in the area. We went up to the top of the mountain to go birding again at 5:30am and had a splendid early morning with Joseph. We spent some time in a hide like the guy on a Planet Earth looking for the Superb Bird of Paradise and saw several birds of paradise throughout our couple of hours at the top. We sprinted down when it was time to go since we didn’t want to leave the top.

Brown sickle bill bird of paradise

Another bird of paradise

We set out on our culture tour on the very bumpy and very long road into town. Our first stop was our guide Michael’s village, Kingalri. Michael is only 25 and due to his public speaking skills, has been chosen chief. Chiefs in the highland areas do not come about their position by inheritance – they must earn it through good public speaking, decision making and mediation skills. Michael was a pretty impressive dude. He walked us around his village where saw all of the beautiful Highland gardens full of every vegetable imaginable. The permanent spring climate and fertile soil makes this place magical for gardeners. He introduced us to his wife and two very new children (5 months) and we walked around the village cemetery where his grandfather (a former chief) was buried. There was no sing-sing demonstration, no dance or traditional clothes, the village was just to show what life was like for a village in the Highlands near the city. It was delightful. Life was pretty simple, and there were plenty of throwback elements to traditional times, but you could see right in front of you how the village was adjusting to the modern era.

Michael's village

We visited two more villages where the people brought back some of the old customs to show us how things used to be. Unlike in Tari with the Hulis and up in the Sepik region, near Mt. Hagen a lot of the really old traditional elements have been lost so this stuff was “put on” for the tourists. That said, the people delight in doing it. One village, the Kuzom village of Paiya, actually set up a tiny village museum on the chief’s land before tourists were ever even coming, just because he was concerned with the potential loss of his tribe’s culture among the youth.

The PNG people take great pride in their culture and they are keen show off to the world the many different peoples and customs that coexist in the country. The Highlanders near Mt. Hagen are no different and their beautiful gardens evidence their passion for their land and the proper appearance of their tribe, culture and history.

On our way back to the lodge, we stopped by Banz Kofi, a local grower, where we picked up a few kilos of beans straight from the roasting machine. They packed the bags in front of us and they were still hot when they handed them over. We went to the Mt. Hagen market, PNG’s biggest, where all of the local fruit and veg were on display. The place was like a farmers market on steroids – no pesticides, all local and all being sold by the person that tilled the soil.

Mt Hagen Strawberries

Seeds are more valuable than the actual produce.

Sugar cane - as far as the eye can see.

Coconuts from Madang.

Tomorrow is going to be our last full day in PNG. I am going to be sad to leave. I spent the evening watching the sun set under the Kubor mountains sitting in a garden of brightly colored orchids and wild flowers. The air was clean and fresh and I have a full day of trekking with Joseph to look forward to tomorrow.

Despite all of the beautiful scenery, the fascinating culture and the wonderful art, my favorite thing about PNG remains its people. 

Joseph Ando

We twitched today.

“Twitchers”, we have learned, is the affectionate (or perhaps not so much) term given to bird watchers and aficionados.

Our tour officially ended today and we parted ways with our fellow travelers. We will certainly keep in touch with several – they were a nice group of people and we shared some great experiences with them. Jen and I decided to spend a few extra days in PNG, though, so today we said our goodbyes. We wanted to experience a bit more of the Highlands, so we went up to another lodge that our tour company owns  - Rondon Ridge. 

The place is set high above Mt. Hagen town on Rondon Mountain and it is beautiful. It is a very welcome change from the Highlander Hotel in Mt. Hagen where we spent the past two nights – though the staff there tried their best, some of the unfortunate highlights included a buffet dinner without food followed directly by a buffet dinner with food but without plates and showers where the water cut off mid way through.

The Rondon Ridge lodge is famous for two things – its cook, Honnie, who supplies the rest of the TNT (the tour company) lodges with his recipes and baked goods, and its tour guide, naturalist, botanist and engineer extraordinaire, Joseph Ando.

We’ve taken some pictures to try to demonstrate Joseph Ando’s works but they need to be seen to be believed. Joseph wanted to turn Rondon Ridge into a premier site for birders and naturalists coming to PNG. PNG has 33 out of the total 38 birds of paradise flying over its lands and thus is already a popular destination with twitchers. Rondon Ridge, however, is fairly new and being right outside of Mt. Hagen, would not be the most evident destination for ecotourism. Joseph is dead set on turning that around.

He has constructed a path, including hundreds of mud stairs, wood bridges, proper paths and even stair rails(!) for just under 2 miles through dense rainforest between the lodge and top of the mountain. He did this, he said, because he wants the beauty of PNG to be accessible for people even if they have a hard time getting around. The trail certainly provides some aerobic exercise, as it is around a 1,000 foot elevation gain, but it is pretty easy to ascend and descend. He built drains throughout to ensure that the rains did not destroy his mud stairs and he did all of this in less than 3 years. It would have taken me several life times.

In his spare time, Joseph also built an orchid garden around the size of a basketball court. PNG has more wild orchids than anywhere in the world and Rondon Ridge is at the perfect elevation for them to grow. In order to ensure, though, that even the lazier guests had access to this beauty, Joseph built this orchid garden that displays apparently more than 100 different types of orchids. We spotted about 20 different ones in bloom when we were there for a brief period, even though we are not here for peak blooming period.

A MacGregor's bower bird displaying area. This spot is currently under construction. When finished, the bird will have tamped down all the moss and decorated the entire thing with flowers, in hopes of attracting a mate. 

Despite no formal training, Joseph also knows every single bird noise and what that noise means (and each bird makes about 5 or 6 different types) for each of the 230+ species of birds that live in his Rondon Mountain. He has developed a full guide for the lodge and he takes people out for all day nature walks and birding tours (which we will be doing with him) where he guarantees (yes, he guarantees nature!) that you will see several types of birds of paradise. He knows where each bird lives and eats, which way they fly, and the precise time they will arrive at each tree at the top of the mountain.

Stephanie's Astrapia

Yes, today we twitched. We spent about 4 hours on top of Rondon Mountain with 5 different species of birds of paradise (the King of Saxony, Stephanie’s Astrapia, the Brown Sicklebill, the Black Sicklebill and the Superb) flying all around us and easily a couple of dozen different types of non-paradise birds cooing and flying around us. It was nature at its most brilliant – all courtesy of Joseph Ando. This post is dedicated to him.