BIG MEN, MIRY AND PIKININI, LET'S TOK PISIN' - that's 'Gentlemen, women and children, let's talk business,' to you and me. There are more than 800 languages spoken in Papua New Guinea, but it's pidgin that I hear most. What a joy that is! Where else in the world is Prince Charles known as 'pikinini bilong Mrs Kwin'?
Tari, in the Southern Highlands, is a true wilderness. A place that, surely, only the birds and those who fly high above know exists. Those who, like me, arrive by an eight-seat Twin Otter plane flown by a balding middle-aged man who wears a faded-denim shirt and sepia-tinted aviators. Those who, like me, can only just about make out the squat circular grass-roofed huts of Ambua Lodge below.
In the Tari Valley, Ambua Lodge is a small collection of rustic rooms, which birdwatchers use as a base to explore the forest. One morning, a Stephanie's Astrapia bird of paradise is spotted in the trees outside my hut. But it's dawn, and I'm too blurry-eyed to focus properly. Disappointed to have missed it, I set off along the super highway - a chalky white line scratched across the mountainside - for Tari Gap, where the birds are plentiful.
The bird of paradise is perhaps the most striking, enchanting and charming of all birds. Seeing one in the wild is top of birdwatchers' lists - and here is the place to do it. Of the world's 41 species, 39 are found in Papua New Guinea; in this region alone, 13 have been recorded.
A porky mountain pigeon in a lime-green bathing suit and bright-red swimming cap dives head first from the top branch, plunging into a sea of green leaves. More Astrapias, this time with ribbon tails that can grow up to 1.5 metres long. The King of Saxony. Willy Wagtails. Brown Sicklebills, with their clapperboard call. Swifts, whose bellies make them look like paper aeroplanes.
Some that look like raisins dipped in white chocolate. Drongos? Or was it a dromedon? No, that's a camel or something, isn't it? Lesser-spotted blue-capped sky squirrel? Their names become less important as I get more and more enchanted by the way they move than their rarity. In less than two hours, I spot five types of bird of paradise and countless other birds, albeit as distant blurs.
It becomes obvious why the local Huli people use the birds' plumes to adorn their ornate headdresses, worn for the ceremonial Sing Sing dance. Who wouldn't want to mimic this beauty?
From Ambua Lodge, I walk for two hours through the forest. I cross suspension bridges made entirely of vines, and trudge along paths scattered with apricot- and sultana-coloured leaves. Droplets of rain hang from leaves like glass baubles. Orchids grow haphazardly. White water spills like the train of a lace wedding dress into a jasmine-green pool. Skinny-dipping fairies make ripples across the water, or so I imagine. It smells warm and wet, like a dog's nose.
Hidden in the forest are several villages, where tribal life goes on much as it always has. Huli men never enter their wife's banana-leaf homes. And women must not even walk past, let alone enter, their husband's home. If they do, they must pay compensation (most disputes are settled with the exchange of a pig or two). So where, then, do big men and miry shag, I wonder out loud. 'In the bushes, of course,' laughs Navally, one of the staff at Ambua. 'They all have their own special spot.'
It's not an unusual sight to see men going about their business in elaborate costume. Faces are painted yellow (Ambua means 'yellow clay' in Huli). Branches of palm leaves act as tail feathers. Pigs' tails dangle and swing from woven belts that hold shiny, round bellies in. Vines are bound around biceps and calves. Bodies are smothered with oil. Quills pierce nostrils. And then there are the wigs. The fabulous wigs made from human hair and topped with metre-long plumes from the bird of paradise, which inspired so many of fashion icon Isabella Blow's hats.
More modern embellishments have also made their way onto the wigs: one gent sports a glittery Union Jack, while another has personalised his with a jazzy diamanté skull. Most intriguing of all, though, are the Huli wig men who provide the hair.
Students, as they are known, have a rigorous daily routine, growing their hair for the wigs for 18 months. A teacher casts a spell on water running down stream. Students take some in their mouths like a thirsty elephant would, forcing it through their teeth so that it sprays up in the air and down over the body. A second mouthful is swallowed to cleanse the body from the inside. A bunch of leaves is then dampened and dabbed on to the hair. The hair can't be washed, and students must sleep with their necks propped up on raised branches to force the hair to grow upwards and outwards like a greasy mushroom. There are a strict set of guidelines to follow, too: no girls, no bananas, no walking under certain things.
I SET OFF FOR THE WESTERN HIGHLANDS, which is more modernised. Rondon Ridge, one of Papua New Guinea's smarter lodges, is a 40-minute drive from the main town Mount Hagen. At least, it would have been had there not been major road works (three cars bumper to bumper) in the shape of a sewage pipe being slotted into a deep hole in the red dirt track up the mountain. 'When you come to Papua New Guinea you got to have a lot of patience,' laughs Paul, my guide. His tribe, the 20,000-strong Moki were the first Papua New Guineans to meet Europeans who flew to Goroko by single-engine plane in 1910.
The traffic jam is quite an event for the locals. Women in chintzy smock dresses and wearing fuzzy caps made from dried grass stop to extend an arm through the window of our 4x4. Children light up like cigarettes and stare in harmless fascination. 'Appy noon, appy noon!' The men have darling faces with high cheekbones and wide, toothless smiles. Their wives are more heavy set, with coarse puffs of hair, round cheeks and large noses.
On the slopes of Mount Rondon, the lodge is at an elevation of 7,200 feet, and overlooks the Waghi Valley, with magnificent views of giant Mount Giluwe. This is hiking country, and I'm surrounded by green.
The forest orchestra play relentlessly: cicadas on snare, a whistling snake on triangle, and birds click-clacking away on castanets, and something unrecognisable on flute. Leading me along barely-trodden paths, Paul eagerly points at a clearing that looks like a Big Top circus ring, the stage of a bird of paradise wooing a lady. Next to it is a curious pile of twigs and moss - the hide of a cameraman patiently trying to capture the intricate mating dance, which sees chests puffed, heads bob and tail feathers ping and spin in a show so secret that few have ever seen it. 'What you see on TV is just a glimpse - I've seen the whole thing,' he boasts. Next, a twiggy structure made by an obsessive compulsive bowerbird, which it will fill with treasure: blueberries, beetle wings and petals. No sign of the birds, though.
A walk through the neighbouring village reveals an altogether more manicured scene. Thatch-roofed huts are bordered by impeccably kept gardens singing with sunshine-yellow trumpets. In the vegetable garden, there are rows of sweet potato mounds that look like over-sized molehills, and taro with heart-shaped leaves as big as my torso.
THE MAIN REASON I have come to Papua New Guinea is for the unbelievable diving between bonkers formations found nowhere else in the world. The flight to Tufi takes me over Oro Province's Toblerone ridges and fingers of land that dribble down to the Bismarck Sea like molten lava. These rias are mistakenly known as tropical fjords, and are what make the diving here so unique.
Tufi Resort is right on the edge of one of these and has the area's only dive centre. After dark on the resort's house reef, a jewellery-box coral harbours shiny garnets that turn out to be psychotic-looking shrimp. Psychedelic slugs with wiggly horns, slinky sea cucumbers wrapped up in Moschino quilted jackets from A/W 2007, and incapacitated gobies shuffle about among the rubble. I catch a shamefaced starfish straddling a Coca Cola bottle lodged in some glow-in-the-dark twigletty coral.
At Veales Reef, 10km off the coast, there's an overgrown cabbage patch, which drops off to a wall 45 metres deep. Along it, lilac sea stars facepalm coral and shiny rainbow fish nibble away at it. Families of anemone fish fiercely defend their jelly-worm homes from sweet-toothed predators.
'Dudududdud, dudududud, dudududud,' calls Alex, my eagle-eyed dive guide, through the water. 'Dudududdud.' A hammerhead shark appears through a shimmering blue curtain with the swagger of the lead singer of a world-famous rock band. 'Dudududdud, dudududdud.' Two backing singers sashay out in sync.
A white-tip reef shark plays dead on the seafloor. Another cuts through the water with stealth. A cumulus of bat fish (those funny round-edged triangles with massive foreheads and eyes disturbingly close to their mouths) dangle as if on the strings of a child's mobile. Unfazed, a turtle bobs up to the surface and then nose-dives out of sight.
Cyclone Reef is more subdued. We discover Ariel's treasure-filled cave, but the bounty has long gone and squatters - a French restaurant's worth of spindly lobsters - has moved in. Outside, a casting for Honey, I Shrunk the Fish! takes place, with finger nail-sized damselfish and butterfly fish being tossed about in the current.
Back at the dive centre, I furiously scribble down and sketch everything I encountered. Never have I seen so much - and so much for the first time - on one dive. An albino hammerhead has been rumoured to stalk these waters, and I wouldn't be surprised if that were true. Here, I've come to expect the unexpected since arriving in Papua New Guinea. Back in the airport at Port Moresby, my suitcase comes round on the belt next to two sloppy tuna fish wrapped in black bin bags - heads and tails poking out, and bound across the middle with parcel tape.
WHERE TO STAY IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA
RONDON RIDGE, WESTERN HIGHLANDS
Trans Nuigini Tours has the monopoly on lodges in Papua New Guinea. With 12 rooms, Rondon Ridge is one of the smallest. It has an African safari-lodge feel, with guests out birdwatching most of the day and dining together in the evenings.
www.pngtours.com
www.pngtours.com
AMBUA LODGE, SOUTHERN HIGHLANDS
The basic huts are cosy (your electric blanket is switched on every evening); wide windows give a 180-degree view of the Tari Valley. There's hot coffee, homemade cookies and an open-fire waiting to warm you up after a long day's trek.
www.pngtours.com
www.pngtours.com
TUFI RESORT, ORO PROVINCE
One of the country's smartest places to stay, with proper tiled bathrooms, air-conditioning, sea views, a decent restaurant - lobster is a staple - and an excellent dive centre.
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