I had been almost everywhere in PNG in the last 30 years, but never to Bougainville and Buka islands, therefore my curiosity – coupled with an interest in caves, underground rivers and unusual birds – finally led me there last year. My main motivation was to climb Mt Balbi, an active stratovolcano dating from the late Pleistocene’s ice age, rising at 2715m, and The PNG Air flight out of Port Moresby lands in Kieta, in the humid heat of Bougainville Island’s southeast. Patrick is there in his 4WD to drive me to Arawa, 40 minutes away. It’s an immediate dive into the local ‘far composed of six distinct craters.
west’! Settling down quickly at Cintex Guesthouse, my host takes me for a little tour of town, its traditional market displaying sweet potatoes (kaukau), taro, cassava, ground peanuts, long leaves of dried tobacco, smoked fish and not to forget betelnut ‘buai’ with the mustard stick. When I mention my desire to go up to the old Panguna copper mine, Patrick suggests we first ask permission from one of the landowners – “because this is normally a ‘no go zone’, you know?”. We visit Chris Uma, an ex-commander of the BRA (the Bougainvile Revolutionary Army involved in the bloody decade-long civil war over Panguna that
A male hornbill peers down at us from his tree perch
“The Solomon hornbill is heard mostly by the peculiar sound of its flapping wings when in flight, heavy, propeller-like, as if straight out of the prehistory”
The writer Pierre Constant embarks on a gruelling jungle trek
VOLUME 34 2023
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