Christina Dodwell

Travels in Papua New Guinea Christina Dodwell

This is the story of a young Englishwoman who set out to travel alone through the highlands, jungles and rivers of Papua New Guinea. It is the remarkable tale of a two-year expedition which included an eventful two-week walk and a thousand-mile journey on a stallion (in a country where almost nobody knew what a horse was) during which Christina witnessed a tribal fight with bows and arrows and a pig-killing celebration. She was accosted by bandits, sank into swamps, fell through rotten bridges and got stuck in a ravine. For the fourth stage of Christina?s journey she bought a dugout canoe and spent four months paddling alone on the Sepik River and its tributaries. She met Stone-Age tribes and ventured through swamp forests; she spent four days with a team of crocodile-hunters and learned how to skin the animals; she was arrested as a spy and experienced an earthquake. In a remote village on the Blackwater tributary she arrived during preparations for the initiation of some boys into manhood. She stayed during a week of celebrations leading up to the boys? initiation, which took place in the spirit-house and included a bloody skin-cutting ritual dedicated to crocodiles. Christina?s journeys around this remarkable country have become legends which endure to this day.