Papua New Guinea

A few days ago I had a drink (or two…) with an old friend. “Let’s see,” she said. “What have you done since I last saw you?” It’s been a month.

The answer is that I flew halfway around the world to dive Papua New Guinea for Matador Network, courtesy of the Papua New Guinea Tourism Promotion Authority.

Then, after a few days back in New York, I quick-hit Orlando/Cape Canaveral to watch my friend Al get shot into space aboard Discovery. Back in New York, I was glued to NASA TV on Ustream, watching Al become to 200th human ever to perform a space walk (or EVA – extra-vehicular activity – in NASAspeak).

Fabulous, right?

Now I’m back to the mundane stoking of fires around various irons.

Over the past 6 months I’ve gone at one of two speeds: full tilt or brick wall. It’s a change of pace from my traveling life, which was more like a long trip on the highway: Most of the time you’re at a fast but steady pace, though occasionally you speed up to pass, or else pull over to eat or pee or just stretch your legs.

So. Is this a range life, or just life?

Hello from Tufi, Papua New Guinea. Makes my head spin just to say that!

The journey here was insane – 38 hours, 4 flights and 2 hours of sleep took me to Port Moresby, the capital. My intention had been to check out the town when we arrived, but since I couldn’t complete a coherent sentence I figured it’d be a bad idea to wander alone in a town where so-called “rascols” troll the streets and carjack anyone who looks like they’ve got money. Instead I stayed within the confines of our hotel, surrounded by 8-foot high walls and patroled by a guard weilding some sort of large machine gun. I hit the pool, took a shower, failed to connect to the internet, and passed out by 9.

The following morning we flew to Tufi, on the north side of the main island. I’m delighted to report that my fellow travel journalists and I have gelled into a nice little group. No complainers, no egotists, no assholes. There are the Scuba Diver Girls, Margo and Stephanie, who run a dive shop in San Diego and run the fantastic SDG website. Then there’s Bronwen, from North Carolina, on assignment for Sport Diver. Finally there’s Robin, the only non-diver and only man in our crew. He’s the man behind Modern Gonzo, so it didn’t take much for us to convince him to get certified and join us under water. We’ve got plans to haze him mercilessly.

Today (Wednesday) is our third day of diving. The first day was about small stuff – loads of nudis – and yesterday was the big stuff, including my first ever hammerhead (see pic on FB). Woot! I saw two hammerheads, plus loads of white tips, a black tip and a few small grey reef sharks. We also saw a bat ray, shoals of fuseliers, snapper, unicornfish, etc. The Big Stuff dives yesterday reminded me a lot of Sipadan.

OK, gotta run for my next day of diving. We’re here until Friday.