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Corals and Cultures of Indonesia
& Papua New Guinea
22nd August - 10th September 2026
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(click for full
brochure) |
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We booked this trip after receiving
an email offering us a very tempting discount.
We didn't look too closely at the itinerary because,
although we knew it was an expedition cruise,
we had done similar trips before to places such
as Iceland and the Chilean Fjords, so we thought
we knew roughly what to expect. We were wrong.
It was only after booking that we discovered quite
how expeditionary this particular expedition was
going to be. There would be few, if any, opportunities
to set foot ashore without first climbing into
a Zodiac, and there would be a surprising amount
of snorkelling and swimming in tropical waters,
neither of which we had ever done before.
Bruce threw himself enthusiastically into the
challenges, while Geoff took the rather more pragmatic
approach of deciding to make the best of things
and concentrate on enjoying the cruise, the scenery,
the company and, of course, the food.
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As it turned out, both approaches worked. Despite the occasional
moment of wondering quite what
we had signed up for, we both ended up enjoying the trip
enormously.
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The planned route turned out to be remarkably
accurate, with only a couple of changes. The main one
was that we did not visit Garove Island. We needed to
arrive in Rabaul very early in the morning to catch an
earlier-than-expected flight to Port Moresby at the end
of the trip, so we had to sail directly from the mouth
of the Sepik River to Rabaul. There was also a minor change
to the way we entered Papua New Guinea. We completed the
immigration formalities at Vanimo, shortly after leaving
the Indonesian port of Jayapura, and then bypassed Wewak,
where we had originally been due to enter the country.
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Looking back, this is an early morning photo of our ship,
the Island Sky, anchored at the mouth of the Sepik River
in Papua New Guinea, from where we had just set off on a
Zodiac cruise upriver.
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