Kokoda Trek: Day 2

Thank God there was no rain last night. We woke up at 5AM and were served a breakfast of cereal, baked beans and coffee. There were crispbreads, honey, jam, and assorted crackers available too. People repacked and shed extra things they had brought. Hector was abandoning about half a kilogram of almonds and goji berries. That seemed such a waste, so I took it off of him. My pack was not that heavy.

Every rest break and tea break we got during the day, I got a kick out of offering the almonds to porters and hikers alike. The goji berries were also very yummy on the trail. As we made our way, the leader of the hike kept using his shovel to make notches for everybody’s feet to get traction. After each rest stop, he would bang his shovel loudly twice and say "Packs on! Packs on!" and then start walking. The shovel was the virtual gatekeeper, which trekkers were prohibited from crossing.

As we walked, if we came across villagers or any other porters, or cooks, the Papua New Guinea folks would say, "Dabai na mona!!" And get in response "Dabai Dabai" indicating good morning.

As we walked in the dense forest, the hills and down hills had a big network of three routes, which were often very slippery although they seem like you could get some leverage standing up on them. walking uphill was very strenuous, with multiple switch backs, and often times we would take 30 or so steps and take a break and after half an hour we would get a 5 minutes water break.

Usually people who walked right behind the lead who was carrying the shovel, Ebie, would enjoy longer breaks, because the five minutes break would start after every person in the group had reached that spot. Everyone dreaded to hear the 'Packs on Packs on' call because that meant we had to resume the grueling hike.

I was walking with only one pole and had the second pole on the right side of my day pack. My Porter Jackson had no walking poles, and I thought it would be a good idea to offer him the second pole. I offered it to him and he took it. I was happy that I could help him a bit. Looking back after half an hour, I noticed that he had just taken the pole and put it on the side of the big backpack he was carrying for me. So in essence, I had just given him a little bit extra weight to carry. We passed a set of villagers with men, women, little kids and babies tied to the back of women. They were making their way to Port Moresby to buy supplies and would make the journey back in a week. Tea breaks, usually two before lunch and two after lunch, before hitting the campsite for the night, provided opportunities to rest up, intermingle with other trekkers, understand the PNG culture, see the route we took so far, talk to the other porters, and share food or snacks with them. It also allowed trekkers to share their different snacks amongst each other. The brakes were usually near a creek or a river or a village.

Post lunch, we had a very steep ridge to climb which usually was a climb up, followed by a flat, followed by another climb up followed by a flat and so on. Sweaty head, wet shirt & pants, sloshy shoes, high humidity, heat and steep climbs were the hallmarks of this Kokoda trail hike.

So how hard is this hike? Somebody asked me. I thought it was going to be very easy, but it is pretty hard, I said. The constant climbing, the slippery red muddy path, the fallen tree trunks, the sprawling tree root systems, the river crossings had engaged all kinds of muscles, and I had slipped and fallen many times. I was surprised that the guides and porters were also slipping and falling every so often. Hats off to them though, because many did not have good shoes, some walked bare feet and many had slippers, on top of it they were all carrying at least 45-pound packs. I had thought initially that it would be a relatively easy walk drawing on my experience, climbing Kilimanjaro, hiking Machu Picchu or climbing Mount Whitney, where the daily routine was much more stressful and altitudes were much higher. In the kokoda trail, the heat and the high humidity wears you down.

We came to a rest stop at a village and bought some bananas from the villagers.

As we were about to leave the rest stop, I saw and heard some commotion and discovered that a villager had found a very long python and killed it. I asked him whether it was poisonous, and he said it was not, but he killed it just because everybody was afraid of pythons.

As soon as I reached the camp, I went into the tent, which look very inviting, and fell soundly asleep for two hours, waking up in time for dinner. I completely missed out on all the fun everybody else had in the river bathing and swimming.

The hike makes the shoes really muddy, the gaiters are muddy as well. The socks are very wet. The shirt and pants are stained with dirt so I used to use help from my porter Jackson in cleaning all of them and place them next to the fire overnight so that they could be dried a little bit for the next day.

Usually I shun medication, but I took a pill of Aleve before sleeping so the next morning I could feel relatively new.