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Coverage / Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea

Melanesia

The eastern half of New Guinea and a scatter of Melanesian islands, among the most culturally and biologically diverse countries on earth, with more than eight hundred languages, a spine of jungle-clad mountains crossed by the Kokoda Track, birds of paradise in the highland forests, and Coral Triangle reefs and WWII wrecks off Kimbe Bay, Milne Bay and Tufi.

6 activities · 9 pairings · 11 verified providers

What you can do in Papua New Guinea

Music & Culture Festivals

National Mask and Warwagira FestivalRabaulJulThe National Mask and Warwagira Festival is East New Britain's great celebration of the mask, the region's central cultural form, bringing together the Tolai, Baining and Pomio peoples over several days each July. It opens at dawn with the Kinavai, when the Tolai secret societies of the Tubuan and Duk-Duk glide ashore on canoes out of the mist, cone-shaped masked spirit figures accompanied by the click of tabu shell money. The nights belong to the Baining fire dance, where masked performers leap through and stamp out a towering bonfire in a trance-like rite passed down through generations. Between them come sing-sing groups, string bands and mask displays from across the province. The festival grew out of the older Warwagira and is run by the National Cultural Commission; since the 1994 volcanic eruptions buried old Rabaul it has been staged at the Kokopo showground nearby. It is one of the most atmospheric and least touristed festivals in Papua New Guinea.

River Cruising / Scenic Float

Sepik RiverMay Jun Jul Aug Sep OctThe Sepik is the Amazon of Papua New Guinea, a vast brown river looping through a floodplain of swamp, lakes and rainforest with no road along it, so the water is the highway and the village is the world. What draws travellers is the culture of its banks: the haus tambaran, tall spirit houses with soaring painted facades, the finest woodcarving in the Pacific, and initiation rites in which young men's backs are cut to scar like a crocodile's skin, marking the river's crocodile ancestor. You move by boat, either a shallow-draught cruiser on the tributaries and Blackwater Lakes or a motor canoe on the main river, stopping at villages to see carvers at work, spirit houses opened to visitors and daily life that still runs to the rhythm of the flood. It is one of the last places to witness a living river culture on this scale, remote, unhurried and reached only by water or light aircraft.

Scuba Diving

Trekking / Hiking

Kokoda TrackApr May Jun Jul Aug Sep OctThe Kokoda Track is the great walk of the South Pacific, a 96-kilometre single-file path across the Owen Stanley Range that carries as much history as it does hardship. In 1942 this was the front line of the Kokoda campaign, where Australian and Papua New Guinean forces fought the Japanese advance on Port Moresby in the mud and cloud forest, and the trek still moves between named battle sites, Isurava, Brigade Hill, Templeton's Crossing, with memorials along the way. It runs eight to ten days over a relentless series of ridges and river valleys, through villages that host trekkers and supply the porters who make the walk possible. A guide is effectively required, both for the terrain and because the villages along the route are on customary land. Most walkers come for the war history, the physical challenge, or the family connection to men who fought here, and finish at the Kokoda plateau under the same range they have just crossed.

Wildlife Safaris

TariApr May Jun Jul Aug Sep OctThe forests above the Tari Valley are one of the great bird-of-paradise strongholds on earth, the place David Attenborough came to film them displaying. Thirteen species of bird of paradise have been recorded around the slopes of the Doma Peaks, among them the King of Saxony with its two impossible blue head plumes, the ribbon-tailed astrapia trailing the longest tail feathers of any bird relative to its body, and the blue and superb birds of paradise, alongside more than two hundred other species from bowerbirds to parrots. Dawn is spent at forest leks and display perches with local guides who know exactly where the birds perform. The valley is also the heartland of the Huli, whose wigmen grow ceremonial wigs decorated with the very plumes the forest produces, so the birds and the culture are bound together. This is montane rainforest birding at close range, reached from a single highland lodge.

Witness / Attend

Best months at a glance

	J	F	M	A	M	J	J	A	S	O	N	D
Music Festivals
River Cruising
Scuba Diving
Trekking
Wildlife Safaris
Witness / Attend

Upcoming events in Papua New Guinea