We travelled to Lae especially to see the Morobe show and to get an oil leak fixed on one of the engines. The problem with this part of the world is that its very difficult to get anything fixed properly, nobody in the Solomons could do it and nobody in New Britain nor New Ireland could do it. We sailed from Rabaul to Kimbe Bay and the Walindi Resort, the only resort in the whole area. Unfortunately the anchorage wasn’t great as it was very open but it was ok for a couple of nights.

View from the terrace –

Kimbe Bay is known as a bit of a diving mecca. It is part of the coral triangle of the Indo-Pacific region and has over 800 species of coral fish and 60% of known corals. With only a two night stop I didn’t have enough time to get any diving done – damn it !!

We left Kimbe Bay on our 3 day 3 night sail, this was done with some rough weather encounted down through the Dampier Strait but we got there with no dramas.

We arrived at Lae yacht club and it was nice to have facilities such as a bar, restaurant, showers and laundry all at hand, hadn’t had anything like this for a few weeks !!

The oil leak was fixed and we bought our tickets for the Morobe show, we were advised by virtually all the people we met to take a guide with us as pick pockets were common at the show. The head of security at the yacht club let one of his guys off his duties and he escorted us around the show on the first day, not too sure if we really needed it but better safe than sorry.

The Morobe show is a yearly show that gathers people from all over PNG to display their costumes and show off their dancing. The highlight of the show is always when all the tribes gather in the central arena and sing and dance as they parade around in their local costumes. The costumes differed massively from region to region with some doing loud wild dances to some whipping each other and breaking sugar cane across each others arms, legs and back.

These guys just seemed to be stalking everybody –