The SDG and Me in PNG

« Return to Papua New Guinea

I’m barefoot in thick jungle, walking along a muddy river bank. I should have worn my Croc flops, but at the last moment, I decided to hop on a wooden outrigger with the tribal chief, my heels exposed, in the custom of the locals. Now I’m worried about stepping on plump white spiders, poisonous frogs, and other creatures of dubious distinction. Suddenly, there’s a loud roar – aggressive, savage, but definitely human. Out of the dense jungle, a man appears covered in black mud. The whites of his eyes shine above his gleaming bared teeth. He wears nothing but loincloth made of plants, and a headdress spiked like a punk rocker. In his hand is a long wooden spear, which he beats furiously against his chest, screaming his throat raw. Granted, I’m with a bunch of travellers, and this is a pre-arranged tribal visit. But take into account I’m in a remote corner of one of the world’s most remote countries. This is Papua New Guinea, not Disneyland.

The attack is, of course, a simulation, and while our attacker turns his bark into a bemused smile, there is something distinctly authentic about his performance. Likewise with the young girl having her face tattooed, as is custom in her culture. Her eyes are almost panicky in fear, as her mother gently taps a sharp needle of bamboo against her skin, mimicking, but not penetrating, the design. Many women bear face tattoos in PNG, including her mother, but this particular scene is for demonstration purposes only. On a mangrove-framed salty tributary, seated on a platform of twigs in the middle of a narrow outrigger, I watch two young boys row us upriver without breaking a sweat. Outriggers are the only method of transport here in the region of Tufi, skirting a coastline of fjords and dense jungle. There’s only two cars, both belonging to the Tufi Diving Resort, and a runway. The resort is the only place with electricity, including satellite Internet, and it seems like an oasis of the modern world. How, who and why would anyone even think of building it out here? Ships, Australians, and because the diving is phenomenal. See, you can visit Papua New Guinea for the insane diversity of culture – over 700 tribes with distinct indigenous languages in a population of 7 million! You can visit Papua New Guinea for the insane bio-diversity – 4642 vertebrate species, 10% of the world’s fish species, 735 endemic butterflies, 320 endemic bird species! You can visit Papua New Guinea to do business with the mines and palm oil plantations that drive its economy. Or you can visit Papua New Guinea to dive amongst some of the best reefs in the world. I chose the latter, because of two small pieces of silicon.

My right ear is frot, as they say in South Africa. Rotten. Broken. Unusable. A dozen operations and surgical reconstructions have left it scarred and barely functional. I don’t have those three little bones that make you hear, after an irresponsible doctor unleashed his bull in my inner ear’s china shop when I was just six years old. By removing my hammer, stirrup and anvil, he removed my ability to hear my life in stereo. Various prosthetics failed, and hearing aids makes everything sound tinny and robotic. Whatever, we all have shit to deal with – asthma, eczema, allergies, handicaps. My affliction means I cannot dive, much less put my head underwater, for fear of infections, and water leaking into my brain (OK, that’s not exactly true, maybe, although Lord knows my dirty thoughts could use a rinse). While I grew up watching friends rock diving, watersliding and snorkelling, I had to suck it up and hold myself back. Anyway, my last surgery was in 2006 and the doctor told me the attempt to restore my hearing failed, but the ear was reconstructed to the point that technically I should be able to swim underwater. I’ve had one chronic ear infection since, the result of a water fight in an elephant-shit infused river in Thailand. I’ve subsequently snorkelled in the Red Sea and the Maldives and the Philippines, and even tried scuba, with an instructor in the Philippines who didn’t seem to understand the concept of equalization. Looking back, I’m damn lucky my head didn’t explode. Anyway (I’ll try move it along now) I recently came across a fantastic product called Doc’s Pro Plugs. These are silicon ear plugs with a tiny pin-prick hole enabling the wearer to equalize, while keeping water out. They cost about $20, and I bought them from a kayak instructor who handled them like they were small pieces of gold. Well, they’re worth more than gold. They are the keys to the Magical Kingdom! If you have ear issues and want to scuba dive, click here to find out more. I endorse them, I bow before them, I sing Hallelujah to their glory. Doc, whoever you are, you’re a freaking genius and every creature in the ocean loves you, including me, sinking into the warm, deep tropical waters of Papua New Guinea.

It’s me, and the Scuba Diver Girls. Technically just Margo and Stephanie are the Scuba Diver Girls – a dive shop/online dive cult they run out of San Diego. But Christina and Bronwen and Laura are all advanced divers too, so I might as well brand them all SDG. The SDG and me. Since I didn’t dive, the original plan was for me to explore the surface while they spent their days swimming deep amongst the coral. The only problem is our destinations are Tufi and Walindi, two renowned diving spots where everything above water is interesting, but not the smoking Cohiba. Doc’s Pro Plugs changed all that. Tufi, with its views of the fjord and its world-class crescent-shaped house reef, was a perfect place to take my PADI Open Water Course. It’s located in a small region on the eastern coast of PNG, almost comically remote, where locals and kids gather at the airstrip for the weekly highlight, a plane load of ghosts emerging from the loud sky bird. OK, it’s not the 1930’s, when the Leahy brothers discovered one million people living in the country’s highlands, previously unknown to man. We’re not white spirits returning with ancestors from the dead. We’re dive tourists. We’re coming from high, and we’re heading on low.

The resort itself is homely and small, all wood and leafy plants. Nothing at all like Club Med, more like a modest house. Some hotels have dogs to make their guests feel at home. We had a wallaby named Stu with his large drooping nut sack, and a hopping hornbill named Coco, prone to nipping toes under the dinner table, screeching, and pooping fruit on the hardwood floors. With his beady eyes and neurotic twitch, I made peace with Fruit Loops, until he poo-pooed his paw-paw all over me. Cuckoo for Coco Puffs. The Scuba Diving Girls, including Bronwen from Sport Diver and Christina from Matador, are here to cover the winner of a Tourism Papua New Guinea promotion in which the lucky winner is flown to the island to name his own dive site. We arrived a few days early, so they hit the 30C crystal-blue water, exploring the reef while waiting for Frank, the winner from Colorado. I hit the books, crash coursing PADI’s five beginner classes, learning about decompression sickness and buoyancy, regulators and nitrogen levels. My classroom was the house reef, rife with lionfish and coral, and two sunken boats at the bottom. My instructor’s name was Glen, who, like most of the villagers in Tufi, walked barefoot with large, callused feet, and chewed betelnut until his teeth and lips were stained blood-red. I’ve been so keen to dive all these years that I jumped in the deep end, acing my course exams and underwater trials. Underwater, I felt I could fly in an alien planet crammed with alien life forms. Sluggish, but free to float in any direction. The deep sound of my breath added an aural otherworldliness, bubbles floating to the surface, larger and larger, like jellyfish. I immediately felt grateful for finally getting here, and so sad I couldn’t get here sooner – in legendary diving countries I’ve visited like the Philippines, Malaysia, and Australia. The girls were the ultimate cheerleaders, offering tips, helping me calculate my pressure groups (although computers do all the work these days). Everyone got in the spirit, like watching a younger brother walking for the first time. Margo and Stephanie, with their blonde braids and branded tank tops, recorded my education for their website and Facebook followers, all 43,000 of them. They filmed the process from my first discovery dive to my first qualified dive, swimming through the air hoops Glen would blow upside down. Another dream realized. Scuba diving (tick) in Papua New Guinea (tick). They tell me I’m one lucky son-of-a and they’re right.

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