Port Moresby

Hi Folks
We got into Port Moresby very early yesterday. It is nearly 30C and the whole town is covered in flowers (hibiscus, bouganvillia, frangipani, ginger) and smells lovely. The hotel was great and only charged us for one night. Hotel surrounded by barbed wire and were told not to leave the compound. Ulrich couldnt get any cash at the airport so we had to go into Port Moresby centre to get cash which I was not happy about. I got the hotel to drive us and convinced the driver to wait right outside and not drive off. In the end it was fine and we got to see a bit of PM which is like Exmouth but with flowers and coconut palms, didnt feel scarey at all. Flew to New Britain today via a suprise stop over in Bouganvillia Island. Rabaul is great and this hotel is lovely, no barbed wire, great food and a hugh room. We are right under the volcanoes one of which is venting lots of smoke, which looks impressive. We went into whats left of the town (most of it was bureid in 6m of ash in 1994) and bought food for the boat trip to Palmalmal on Friday. It was a great place, quite busy and a contiuously people were saying hello and Good afternoon sir at us. The fresh food market was great. We bought tiny bananas which taste so good, much sweeter than home and they cost 1p each (bought 20). Tomorrow I will be mainly eating coconuts and pawpaws. Lots of people chewing beetlenut which I have been warned off. We arranged our ship schedule for friday at the shipping company so thats sorted. Might pay a bit more for a cabin rather than the deck as the volcano is blowing smoke the way we are going so any rain on the deck will be acid (learn this and lots of top tips from a gold mining engineer whos staying here). Tommorrow we are going to be tourists and walk up to the volcano monitoring centre ( no where near the active volcanos) then go to Kokopo to the bank (the new capital rebuilt 20km away from the volcanos). In Kokopo they still use shell money for small items so quite fancy using some of this. Picked up an info note from the others cavers that they left for us, so all in all its great and running smothly.

Cheers Andy