Kavieng

Hi friends,

This month’s featured PNG travel was a trip to the beautiful islands in New Ireland Province. While the trip focused mainly on speaking to people in the provincial administration regarding climate change issues, fortunately we had time for a quick visit to Nusa Island Retreat – a small self standing island hideaway with a few bungalows (pictures attached), along with a beautiful view of clear blue-green waters and other islands. It was only a 20 minute speedboat ride away from Kavieng, though a pity that we time did not allow us to explore many smaller islands North of Nusa.

While Kavieng (capital of NI province) is known for phenomenal diving, that is a luxury I shall have to wait on since the 2nd and final day of my trip involved a 10-hour road trip to visit a hydro pilot site (including me driving a manual pick-up truck for 5 hours!) As with most other island communities, people are friendly, welcomed tourists and showed us a good time.

I know some of you have requested a special South Africa edition of these emails; all I will say is the trip was a blast, catching 6 games in 12 days (in 6 different stadiums!) was definitely worth all the sweat, $ and pain we went through. You can have your own view of the journey we undertook on facebook, and seriously hope all of you make it to Rio in 2014!