On the other side of the mountain from Taigei was the village of Tridaga, and this was our greeting when we arrived. A lot of people here have never seen a white person, or very few at best, so we pose for a lot of pictures on their cell phones, shake hands with lots of folks, hear lots of “goodbye misters”, and get lots of folks who just want to touch us.
We went out on the lake in this boat that was totally awesome. They drove us around the lake and at some point I asked Joerg where we were going and he said probably a 3 hour tour. I don’t know how many of you are up to date on your Gilligan’s Island, but their 3 hour tour didn’t work out so well, so I said that I hoped that that wasn’t the case. We did get caught in a storm out on the water and we were all so cold by the time we got back that we were numb…but our “3 hour tour” ended much better than theirs. A quick sit down by the fire and a hike back up over the mountain helped to warm us right up.
We did have another huge rain storm as we were coming down the last of the mountain which made the last of our trek a little treacherous and I have a pretty good scar to show for it. I fell off the last of the fences that we had to climb over…go figure. The rain also made for a really interesting journey out of Taigei the next day. Most of our trail was under at least a foot of water. That’s where this picture of Joerg hiking up his high waters came from.
After hiking to Taigei, over and down the mountain, over and down the mountain again, and hiking out from Taigei, we were unpleasantly surprised to find that our taxi had not come for us, so we started walking back to Manokwari. There aren’t a lot of cars out that way, so we didn’t have a lot of options. We ended up walking a good distance to the next village, where we did eventually meet up with a taxi to return us to town. PRAISE GOD. I was doing a lot of praying on that road. I really didn’t have much desire to walk all the way back to Manokwari…it would have taken a lot of endurance and I’m pretty sure my legs would have fallen off.
But because there aren’t many vehicles out there, as many people as possible piled in. You have to understand that this vehicle is one of those with the 2 front seats, the back seat and one of those squatty truck beds. At one point we counted 21 people on board, 7 inside, and 14 in the back. We were part of the 14. This is a picture of a Papuan seat belt…just hold on to the person in front of you. Seriously, the entire ring of guys that were sitting on the rim of the truck bed were all holding on to the guy on either side of them. It was pretty hilarious.
On the other side of the mountain from Taigei was the village of Tridaga, and this was our greeting when we arrived. A lot of people here have never seen a white person, or very few at best, so we pose for a lot of pictures on their cell phones, shake hands with lots of folks, hear lots of “goodbye misters”, and get lots of folks who just want to touch us. 
We went out on the lake in this boat that was totally awesome. They drove us around the lake and at some point I asked Joerg where we were going and he said probably a 3 hour tour. I don’t know how many of you are up to date on your Gilligan’s Island, but their 3 hour tour didn’t work out so well, so I said that I hoped that that wasn’t the case. We did get caught in a storm out on the water and we were all so cold by the time we got back that we were numb…but our “3 hour tour” ended much better than theirs. A quick sit down by the fire and a hike back up over the mountain helped to warm us right up.
We did have another huge rain storm as we were coming down the last of the mountain which made the last of our trek a little treacherous and I have a pretty good scar to show for it. I fell off the last of the fences that we had to climb over…go figure. The rain also made for a really interesting journey out of Taigei the next day. Most of our trail was under at least a foot of water. That’s where this picture of Joerg hiking up his high waters came from.
After hiking to Taigei, over and down the mountain, over and down the mountain again, and hiking out from Taigei, we were unpleasantly surprised to find that our taxi had not come for us, so we started walking back to Manokwari. There aren’t a lot of cars out that way, so we didn’t have a lot of options. We ended up walking a good distance to the next village, where we did eventually meet up with a taxi to return us to town. PRAISE GOD. I was doing a lot of praying on that road. I really didn’t have much desire to walk all the way back to Manokwari…it would have taken a lot of endurance and I’m pretty sure my legs would have fallen off.
But because there aren’t many vehicles out there, as many people as possible piled in. You have to understand that this vehicle is one of those with the 2 front seats, the back seat and one of those squatty truck beds. At one point we counted 21 people on board, 7 inside, and 14 in the back. We were part of the 14. This is a picture of a Papuan seat belt…just hold on to the person in front of you. Seriously, the entire ring of guys that were sitting on the rim of the truck bed were all holding on to the guy on either side of them. It was pretty hilarious.
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