It was in the company of friends that I approached her. The line, indifferent, waited for me with the same aloofness as it would anyone else, accustomed, ignoring or not even wanting to know about how much it meant to me crossing it, conquering it, getting to its other side, that of the new country which marks also the start of a new stage in my trip, in my life, in my world. Unaware, the line separated me from much more than Papua New Guinea, separating me also, even if only symbolically, from the start of my crossing of the Pacific Ocean, the new great challenging leg of my trip.
Before I approached the line, however, two years had passed, those which brought me over land and sea from the south of Portugal, from my hometown of Loulé to this border. It was long the path traveled, in which I crossed Europe swiftly, embraced the orient in Turkey, conquered the frontiers of suspicion in Iran, risked the crossing of misunderstood Pakistan in an intense and welcoming surprise, rediscovered the way to India, land of an old passion of mine which grew even bigger, finding further ahead in Nepal my house in the mountains, where I lingered over five months with eyes and feet laid on the top of the world.
This is how I lived my first year on the road, which ended epically with a brief return to India on the way to the first maritime crossing of my journey, done initially by ferry from Kolkata to the Andaman Islands, then from these islands to Thailand on board a small catamaran rocked by the wind and the waves.
It was in a Thailand in political turmoil that my second year of travels began, starting also in this country a brief tour around the Southeast Asian carrousel, which continued across Cambodia, lost in between the immense beauty of its cultural heritage and the extreme horror of the memory of Pol Pot’s regime, carried on in exotic and astounding Vietnam, which left me with an immense desire to return soon, endured in lazy Laos, where I spent weeks loosing track of time, before being finally completed in a return to Thailand, which this time I found filled with smiles and water flying in the skies as the Thai commemorated their new year, or Songkran.
Finalized the carousel ride I headed south, crossing briefly Malaysia and Singapore in a sort of return to the west made with oriental eyes. Over the course of a few weeks I let myself involve by these countries’ intense mix of modernism, ancestral cultures and extreme flavors, to which Portugal is no stranger, especially in Malacca, former center of the Portuguese oriental empire of the 1500s, and where still today language and culture are kept alive by the pride of the few descendants of old Portuguese sailors.
From Singapore the sea was crossed once more, to spend the rest of my year hoping from one island to the next as I traveled Indonesia from end to end. In the middle, however, I spent two months meeting the courageous people of the former Portuguese colony of East Timor, these days not saddened but busy building its young growing nation. In East Timor I could ease my homesickness, by finding the so Portuguese ‘bacalhau’ (salt cod) and ‘pastel de nata’ (custard pie), or by speaking my own language, gaining at the same time new inner strength to carry on my endeavor by witnessing in the flesh the courage of this incredible people, which struggle for independence I followed as I grew up, and which live testimony reassured me that to resist is indeed to win. But if in East Timor in a way I found my old home, in Indonesia I found a new one, spending there six months in total, before and after East Timor, dedicated to knowing its immense natural and cultural diversity.
Towards the end of the second year of my journey I arrived to a new continent, Oceania, which I first touched in the western half of the island of Papua, a region incorporated in Indonesia in the 1960s, and where until today many fight and dream about the promised independence, postponed by an Indonesian invasion which until today perpetuates the colonial era in this half of the island. Overlooking all this, in a recognition of how much I was powerless, tired and nostalgic of home, I immersed myself during Christmas in the magical waters of the Raja Ampat archipelago. Later on, in the first days of the new year, I moved on with my trip, entering the waters of the Pacific Ocean while sailing along Papua’s north coast on my way to Papua New Guinea’s border.
It was in the company of friends that I approached her. The line, indifferent, allowed me to walk past her, while I waved a last goodbye to my second year of traveling, personified in Jose, Queensa and their family, friends from West Papua who I met exactly as I entered the Pacific Ocean, and who insisted on bringing me to this line, place of a new farewell, beginning of a new stage of my journey.
After conquering the line I looked forward, letting myself embrace little by little in the reality of Papua New Guinea, in its intense live dark green, in its small villages, in the gentle winding of its roads, in the contour of its nearly virgin coastline, in its untouched tranquility which contrasts sharply with the overpopulated and hiper-constructed Indonesian half of the island. I liked this place immediately, for no reason, or maybe just because I felt I was entering a new world, in all so different from my own.
About an hour after crossing the border I arrived to the first town, Vanimo, which despite being the capital of the Sandaun province felt more like a village, scattered in between two beaches and around an airfield, populated by small wooden tin-roofed houses dispersed among the inevitable green of this country. Despite arriving to Vanimo to spend a couple of days, I ended up not spending more than a couple of hours, those necessary to by chance finding eastbound transportation, getting also on the way a first taste of this country’s gastronomy in a traditional ‘agir’, simple dish of chicken, plantain, yam and greens steamed inside banana leafs.
That’s how within a few hours of arriving to the country I found myself in the middle of the ocean, sailing eastwards along the coast amidst erratic waves and on board a small fishing boat of about 4 meters, in a sort of aquatic roller-coaster in which the experienced captain skillfully eluded the gigantic waves that dwarfed our passage.
I confess I felt afraid, after all this was the first time I was at the mercy of such a big sea in such a small boat, risking the next few hours in the hands of the unknown, sailing my life along the fine line separating the sea from its waves.
I confess I felt brave, feeling oddly at ease in this infuriated ocean, feeling at home, happy, surrounded by people who day after day prove so much braver than I’ll ever be, who nonetheless welcomed me as one of their own, first in a comforting smile of who was seeing the fear in my eyes, then in an intoxicating chat about the country, their life, my own, sharing hours of disquiet which in the company of their words passed by swiftly.
I confess I felt happy, when after four hours we finally arrived, when the waves gave way to calm waters, when the sea became firm land in the town of Aitape, when the unknown became home, when the intense day of traveling gave way to a bed and all the emotions rested in the well-deserved sleep of an exhausted traveler.
It was in the company of friends that I approached her, and once the border was conquered that’s how I lived my first day in Papua New Guinea. Intense, exciting, scary, intoxicating, dangerous, pleasantly uncomfortable, surrounded by immense beauty, my day was above all spent in the company of delightful strangers who became friends, even if only for an instant, giving me a warm welcome to the lands of the Pacific, in that which was the first day of many more I hope to live while crossing this immense ocean, following uncertain route and destinations, following but the whim of chance, but following also this immense desire to fulfill my journey, through land a sea until I reach home again, always with no haste to arrive.
