Yorks City an Independence special

Iokea or Yorks City as the Gulf people call it, is about 20 or so kilometers from the Trans-highway from Port Moresby to Kerema in the Gulf Province.

On the Independence weekend we took a trip there for some customary work on my uncle's head stone. It took us a good 3 to 4 hours from Port Moresby to the turn-off into Iokea which is at Apanaipi. From there another grueling 20 or so kilometers along the rugged dusty roads into the village. It was fun, and an adventure for a lot of the travelling team as it was their first trip along the highway or into Yorks city.

The road from Port Moresby was great apart from the occasional potholes, humps, ditches and youths collecting money, claiming it for church work. Anyway, about 4 to 5 kilometers in the Beraina area before the Angabanga bridge is not sealed and a little bit bumpy. But it was adventure! From the turn off at Apanaipi to Yorks city, there is a big ditch or we called it "Ryan Pini's Swimming pool" that is about 1.5 meters deep and filled to about 80 or so centimeters of brown miloish water. (I doubt Ryan would train in that). It's about 10 to 15 meters long and only 4wd's can pass through that area.

Well all the vehicles made it across accept for the big PMV truck which feared it would bog. Anyway the adventure continued as we all got off the vehicles and decided that the women, mothers and children would travel to the village first and the vehicles would return for us - "the adventurers". So the long wait began and we found stuff to do to keep us occupied and alert for the bushes hide some harmful enemies like, snakes, mosquitoes and ghosts.  So we decided to light a few fires to keep us alive from the harm, we even danced and pretended to be drunk, cracking jokes and all for the sake of survival.

Anyway, the party returned and we all shifted the cargo from the PMV truck on the other side of the Pini pool to the safety of the vehicles. Then it was home time, the dusty bumpy road took us all the way to Yorks city. As usual jokes and fun all the way. It was about 8:30pm when we left the Pini pool and arrived some good hour so later in the village. The night flew by and before we knew it we said good night after freshening up and made our way to bed for the big day tomorrow.

The next day (September 16th)...

After the days activities (I'll post something on this), it was time to head to the Yorks beach. Yes you heard right the beach and its about 20 minutes walk from where we are (We are about 2 kms inland where an old airstrip was before). Anyway, we had some fun time at the beach and headed back home for too reasons really. Number one, it was so humid and hot and number two, from the beach it takes you some hundred meters to reach the sea.

The next few days were the same as we had a walk around the village and went to visit some of our relatives graves to pay our respect to them. After that it was the beach again, and the long walk back to the old airstrip. Water there is a problem but we managed quite well because we went there prepared. But that was not an excuse, as there was a water supply pipe running through the whole villages. My dad was dying to go and see the source of the water supply but there was no time to do that.

Well after a few nights, we headed back to Port Moresby, but it felt strange for most of us. Maybe because Yorks had so much to offer that we did not stay long enough to experience that. We kind of felt we wanted to stay and really took our time to get ready for the return trip. But as adventures are full of surprises, we encountered one minutes before we took off. One of the vehicles had broken studs to two of its back wheels forcing us to abandon the car and make an extra trip once we arrived safely at the Apanaipi junction back to Yorks. But all was good as we left for Port Moresby at about 3pm. A fun trip back to wrap up an eventful Independence long weekend, arriving to the busy traffic lights with 10, 000 cars, noise, and the hassle and bustle of city life (excluding Yorks City).

Cheers,