Mijts Blog

Few weeks back I took a trip from Kokopo, where we have our administration office, around to Open Bay where the company has its tree plantation. I was fortunate enought to be able to fly there by helicopter and do the return trip by boat.

Most visitors to the Open Bay site get a tree planted with name tag, one of the photos below shows my new tree.

On my TrackMe page you can see the trip I took as I recorded both the helicopter ride and the return boat trip using my GPS equiped phone. Then linked to Google maps using TrackMe which is one of those really great programs that gets developed and top it off is made freely available.

Below are some photos from the trip.

Such a pity that the camera broke and because I have to send off to Sydney for repairs will be ages before I get it back.

Good news is that my phone at home is working again, but getting terrible line speed, usually max is 26.4Kbps. Still cant complain. Understand that Telikom here a re close to getting ADSL into Kokopo but this rumor has been around for a while so I’ll wait and see.

The volcano has been very quite in recent weeks, very little ash and just lots of steam. But has made life much more pleasant here.

Maria is on her African tour at the moment and currently around the Angola border.

My apologies for not adding any new posts in recent times.  The problem is that my phone at home has not worked for the last month at least. I understand that Telikom now know what the problem is and should be fixed in the near future. Based on previous experience this may take a while.

Once I get connected again I will be more regular.

The other problem is that my 3 month old expensive super tough Olympus camera that can be jumped on and go under water has broken, looks like small microswitch that tells the camera if the battery cover is closed has failed. Its off to Australia for repairs, but that also can take months, just in getting there and back

Such is life in Kokopo.

The ash is now blowing the other way and is a clear day here in Kokopo. Late yesterday had lots of lightning and thunder but not much rain. Would love to have a big downpour to clear the ash that is still lying around.  In speaking to others appears that the wet season which we should be have now is much drier than normal.

 But conditions today are much better.

Been almost a week without a cut to our water supply during the day, looks like they now only cut it late at night and bring back up early in the morning, I understand that repairs to supply are now undertaken at night. Also our landlord has gotten around to replacing the non working pump, so in future we should be able to use tank water as backup supply.

And other good news is our garbage got collected as usual yesterday, they didnt pick up last week, not sure why. But in this climate certainly need weekly collection.

Down by the golf course

Finally arrived in Kokopo, airport was closed so had to come by boat, the MV Solomon Queen, via Kimbe. Was interesting trip to say the least.  The volcano is constant companion with its ash and sonic booms. Hopefuly the wind will change direction soon and start to blow the ash away from Kokopo and the airport. The airport has been closed for nearly a week now and no idea as to when it will open.