Papua New Guinea

Port Moresby & Tufi

From August 25th to August 28th 2025

Day 1

We flew in from Sydney and arrived in Port Moresby by 12pm. At 2pm, we landed in Tufi thanks to TropicAir. Tufi is a small village on the easternmost edge of Papua New Guinea - only accessible by plane. The airstrip was a grass field with a faint dirt line acting as the landing strip.

After we checked into our hotel, Tufi Dive Resort, we walked down to the “harbor” and found the dive shop. After taking a look around, we then walked back up to the hill to the airstrip that we landed on a few hours earlier. On our return from the airstrip, 2 ladies had “set up shop” and Hailey prepared to buy necklace/shoulder beads from one of them for 80 Kina ($19 USD). They also showed us what beetle nut looked like.

We sat for dinner at 6:30 and were first surprised with a bowl of popcorn. Max was happy to see it. Dinner was tomato soup with garlic bread, then followed up with pork belly and a turmeric looking rice.

Day 2

We woke up around 6:30, sat for breakfast by 7:30, and were in the truck to go diving by 8am. Breakfast was scrambled eggs, banana bread, banana, & peanut butter from China. It was neat to catch the morning action at the dive shop in the morning, local villagers were coming in and out for the days work or to/from the market.

It took about an hour long speedboat ride to make it to the Honeymoon dive location with Andy, a local, our guide. Hailey was getting so sea sick from the choppy waves and was less than a minute from throwing up. The dive was around an hour long and we saw a beautiful green sea fan field, two beautiful lobsters, a closed tentacle sea anemone with clownfish trying to get back inside, and plenty of colorful fish. We did see a small black tip shark. Once back in the boat, we had an hour of surface time - neither Max or Hailey were looking forward to the surface interval because of the turbulent waves. But, we held on strong and made it to Shark Tip for our second dive. We did see a few sharks on the dive, plenty of miraculous looking nudies, translucent jellyfish, and even more fish than the previous dive site.

On our way back from diving we were joined with a pod of 50+ dolphins, who helped escort us back towards Tufi. It was a beautiful sight to see, some baby dolphins even jumping out of the water.

By 1pm we made it back to the hotel and sat for lunch: grilled fish, fresh potato fries, and a cucumber salad. We rested for an hour, but woke up around 3pm to take a tour around the surrounding area with our local guide, Yankee.

Yankee took us first to the butterfly reserve to see the Queen Alexandra Birdwing Butterfly, aka Blue Ulysses or Bright Green Priyam. We were amazed at the size of the egg, the caterpillars and the actual size of the butterflies themselves. They are the largest butterfly specie in the world. They were so big that when they flapped by, you could feel the wind force from their wing. The view from the butterfly reserve was the most beautiful, there were kids down below the fjord laughing and playing, taking turns at throwing each other off the canoe. Every village we passed by miraculously had ladies waiting with their hand crafted goods, waiting to be sold :) Hailey got a few odds and ends. In all, it was a 2 hour walk but we were so grateful that we did it. It was a long and busy day!

We sipped on coconuts and munched on popcorn that night as we watched a glowing pink and purple sunset. Dinner was fish soup, a half chicken, and a type of peach tiramisu.

Day 3

We started our morning at 9am with a tribal village cultural tour at the fjord just across from Maclaren Harbor. We were picked up in a canoe by a local dressed in the most ornate woven cloths, loin bags, bark cloth wraps, flowers, palm grass - complete with feathers, shells and elaborate body paint. He took us a 10 minute canoe ride over to his village and we got off to meet the village leader. The village leader introduced us to all the other villages who were equally dressed in the colorful and locally resourced dress items.

We were greeted by a local kid with a spear who was brandishing his weapon to see our reaction - this would have been how foreigners would have been met in the past. You first have to state you intention - were you a friend or an enemy? We were then welcomed with a beautiful song and dance using instruments that were made of mulberry trees and lizard skin. Unsurprisingly, the ladies were also set up here with their shops of their handy goods and crafts: shell shoulder necklaces, bags, cloths, shells, shark bone beads, feathers, more woven bags, and more. We spent about 2 hours with this village before heading back to our hotel and had lunch: pasta bolognese with shredded cheese!

We took the afternoon off of any activities so we could shower, do a few exercises/yoga, pack the bags, catch up on travel planning, and rest.

Day 4

We ate at 7:30am and left around 8am to see the waterfall nearby. We hopped in the water, swam under the waterfall, then headed back to the hotel to finish packing the bags and catch our flight out at 11:30 on TropicAir.

We made it to the Port Moresby airport and passed through security easily on our way to Singapore.