Jayapura

Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world!
Sailing across the border was quite special, we all said our good byes while going past the light house that signifies the border, and changed our courtesy flag.
And what a change!

We got to Jayapura - Big city, cars and motor-bikes everywhere, shops and cafes, hotels and mosques whaling "Alla hua Akbar".
We stayed a week in Jayapura, exploring the city, the markets, the food and doing all sorts maintanance stuff for the boat.

We all quite enjoyed the week we spent in town and said our fare-wells to Amy who decided to leave back to Australia.

Arriving at Jayapura

The gang...

The night market

Day at the mall

Mom, dad, I've got some news... :)

Amy's fair-well dinner

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Vanimo

Vanimo, a lovely little, laid back town with a lot of points and bays. The perfect spot to unwind before leaving PNG.

Strolling through town, we saw some guys climbing coconut trees and they even offered us some. Everyone was so helpful and nice.

After organizing customs and checking out of PNG, we all hired a power boat to take us surfing around the point. The waves weren't super impressive but we all had a great day on the beach, swapping surf boards between us and just having fun.

Good bye PNG, You've been absolutely great!

Alon's poor attempt at baking...

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Wewak

Wewak was a bit of a bad experience for us. After going ashore for some shopping we went back to sleep on the boat, for we were devastated from the night's sail.

During our sleep, the local huba-lubas stole a lot of our stuff from the deck, while we were down below!
John caught one of them escaping and we quickly lifted anchor to get out of there.
A very nice lady pedaled out to us with most of our stuff that she recovered, to give it back to us.
There are good people everywhere :)

Oh, and we caught a shark on the way from Wewak! Delicious!

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Hansa bay

Yet another perfect lagoon, with crystal clear water, deserted island with sandy beaches and coconut trees. It's a hard life indeed...

In Hansa bay we really took it easy, didn't do much more than relaxing on the beach and going for a snorkel.
During WWII, the allied forces sunk 34 ships in that small bay. We dived around the ships and saw some plane wrecks on the beach. Amazing...

Afternoon activity...

Byamee and Spider's web

The captain's seat!

The new "tribal" guitar...

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Sek island

Unfortunately, we don't have any photos from Sek island because we were too busy... surfing!
We found a good little break and spent a couple of days exploiting it.
For Alon it was the first time ever and Amy was a great teacher.
John, not game enough to try, played the role of the good host and entertained the local huba-lubas on the boat...

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Madang

On the way to Madang we encountered some rough seas that almost threw Amy overboard!

That was really scary for all of us and a safety awareness wake up call...

Madang was a really nice town, we enjoed our time there fine dining at the local restaurants, swimming in the hotel's pool, along side shopping at the markets and doing maintanence runs for the boat.

Dolphins!!!

Our bog croaked, introducing the new and improved... bucket!

Loads of bats all over town, apparently not really afraid of daylight...

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Finch harbour

After a two days' sail we have arrived to a beatiful, serene harbour where the water were flat as a dodo.

We had a lovely pancake breakfast on "Antaia" and after that we went to the beach.
Quite luckily, that same day was the annual celebration of the first missionare comng to town and it was a great festivity with traditional costumes and dances, just what we were hoping to see.
Happy day :)

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The Trobian islands

The Trobian islands were a bit of a disapointment for us... We were expecting smiling, topless Huba-Lubas and free loving in the "islands of love", and found none of that...

The white man influence seemed to destroy all of that, all the traditional customs and costumes are long gone, and are put up for show once a year in the "Yam festival". The locals offered to put up a show for us, for a nice fee, but we weren't into that...

We were swamped by locals approaching the boat and trying to sell us their carvings and fruit. We ended up with a few not-too-impressive carvings and a full on banana tree on the deck... all of us ate more fruit than ever before... One of the local fishermen sold us a delicious fish and John made us a fantastic fish'n'chips dinner!

Anyway, we had a relaxed few days and prepared ourselves for a two-night ocean crossing back to the mainland...

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