Hike

I had been wanting to go fishing for a while, but due to all the rain we have had, fishing didn't seem like the best idea. I have been watching the National Park series by Ken Burns and have really enjoyed it despite having never been to them. There are no National Parks in PNG, but there is beautiful landscape and scenery all around us, so today Bill and I hiked in the mountains above us and enjoyed some of God's beauty. As we started to go from the villages into the bush, we found ourselves with 10 PNG kids guiding us up the gorge of a tributary of the Kumul Nok (name of the river). We walked through the water or along its banks, enjoying the beauty of waterfalls coming into the gorge and the bush all around us as we went. When the kids didn't know the names of some of the waterfalls or tributaries, we took to naming them, Yes (what the kids thought Bill's name was) Nok, and Erin Nokacoop (waterfall) were some that stuck. On the way back, the kids took us along paths in the bush instead of down the gorge itself. This was quicker, but quite slick. I was thankful for the kid's barefoot surefootedness which helped us along. By far the best traveler of the day was the little puppy who went with us the whole way. He only stood about 1.5 feet off the ground and was about 2 feet long, but he was a trooper. He managed to scale up and down rocks, through the water, and across logs. At times, he would look to anyone close to see if they might carry him over the water, and often they did, but if they didn't, he found a way across himself. Unfortunately, neither of us had a camera we were concerned about water damage from rain, or falling in the water, so we only captured the beauty of what we saw in our minds. Hopefully, one day we will go back again and can get some pictures. For those who liked the picture of the python from last time. It is most likely a Boelen's Python, the most common python in PNG. Thankfully it lives at a higher elevation than our station, so I don't have to fear running into it in the garden.