Day 3 - Friday 20 April Kokoda to Isurava

After eventually getting kind of dry, changed and opening the tent, the beauty of Kokoda Village snapped me out of  my rain infested misery immediately. It was a really beautiful day, still misty and foggy but lifting. My negative thoughts from earlier this morning disappeared completely after that.


After breakfast we took a short walk to the memorial located in Kokoda Village.  There is also a small museum here. 


In the museum I experienced my first Kokoda emotional 'thing'. Brad one of the guys in my team lives about 40 minutes away from me. I had only met him once before on the training trek in Brisbane.  We get on really well and I guess we became friends over the first couple of days. Brad spotted a picture on the wall, the man on the stretcher was Brad's great uncle.  The picture didn't upset me but Brads reaction to seeing it did. Unprepared for that one.

Brad standing beside the photo we found of his injured
great uncle

Mowing the grass machete style

Kokoda was basically where fighting against the Japanese began on the track.  The Japanese captured Kokoda on 28th July 1942 and advanced over the Owen Stanely Ranges toward Port Moresby. Australian soldiers delayed and finally halted the enemy at Oribawa Ridge on 26th September 1942.  The 7th division began an offensive which drove the enemy back through Kokoda to the coast around Buna, where Australian and American troops combined to destroy the entire Japanese force by 22 January 1943. 


A lot of people walk the track from the other direction, I'm glad we are doing it this way because it makes is much easier to follow the history of the battles.


After visiting the museum it was time to head off. The bad news was that because of our flight delays we have about 6 hours of trekking to catch up on.  We didn't really have much time to muck around this morning we had to get moving.  There are over twenty of us doing this trek.  We have split into two teams.  Team 1 are to head off first each day, and Team 2, my team, follow 20 minutes behind. The Teams meet briefly at rest stops and camp together each night. Our team leader is Greg and our medic is Rob, who I have known for a while now. Everyone seems to have come with someone, except for Sam and I, he's from NSW. He actually looks kind of familiar. 


Time for some quick photos then Team 1 set off.  We wait twenty minutes and begin our daily routine of stretching while we wait to leave. I knew Greg and Rob would make us do this.  I was so glad we were doing stretches. We are using a buddy system so have to pair up with someone each day and basically look after each other. Greg travels at the front and Rob at the back. Today I am buddied with Kerry.


We finally set off twenty minutes later. This started a pretty funny routine whenever we set off. Timmy one of the porters would shout out 'ARE YOU READY' and then Aussie Aussie Aussie, we would obviously shout Oi Oi Oi.

Team Kick Ass at the start of the track

The sun is out and it is fairly warm. Much like weather in Noosa so no big deal for me I love heat, but possibly a worry for those not used to humidity.  About 500 m into the walk my hips were aching. And I mean aching. Im not soft when it comes to pain but this was ridiculous.  I played around with my pack for ages thinking that I needed to shift the weight slightly. It didn't work.  Shortly after I had an epiphany. I was wearing skins for the first time ever and they were compressing my glutes way too much. The more I worked my muscles the tighter they became and the worse it got.  A quick adjustment and it felt better. I only wore them one more day after this, the same thing happened. They'll be getting lost in my floordrobe now that's for sure.

The Kokoda Valley, we started down the bottom
somewhere in the flat part.

A couple of hours in

Choko vines, this place is spectacular 

A couple of hours in, a couple of the girls were having trouble already.  One was sick before we even started so she was finding it pretty tough. Another of the girls was just finding it difficult, she was carrying a heavy pack and was not acclimatised to the humidity.  Not to worry, Isaac one of the porters, who was already carrying someone else's pack, grabbed her pack and bicep curled it in his arm. He walked like that for the rest of the day. And held her hand the whole time. The porters are amazing! Their strength never ceased to amaze me.

Break and water refill time

We have a break every couple of hours. At lunchtime we get our new ration packs.  Good.  I eat so much and my food is nearly gone.  There's plenty of water around so its easy to drop the weight of your pack and just refill in one of the many creeks, a massive bonus.


Today has been hilly, rocky and absolutely beautiful.  Lots of tree roots and some small creek crossings, less than ankle height.  I think we have walked about 12 km today, I am not really sure. Today we passed a memorial plaque on the track where a trekker died in 2006. So close to the end of the track.  Pretty sad stuff. He was only 32.





We arrived at Isurava Village in the afternoon around 4, I think, not sure I don't wear at watch and definitely don't want one here. We are staying here tonight. We're barely even in the village when Greg tells us to drop our packs we were doing a workout, because we had only been using our legs.  The look on some of the team members' faces was priceless.  I think from memory we did pushups and V sits. Did some more stretching as well. So good.

Afterward we chatted with some of the local kids, some of us had brought some toys, books, pencils etc so we gave some of these to the them.  Later on I had a bit of a personal struggle about giving the kids toys (books and stuff are OK). They appreciated them but it also struck me that their lives were peaceful, happy and simple and did I really need to impose westernised materialistic items on them? They would have been better off with clothes which are more of a necessity and they clearly didn't have enough of, when I go back one day I'm going to take some instead.


We settle in to the camp and sort our stuff out before dark. I hung my sleeping bag up near the fire to dry and washed some clothes, well sort of anyway.  After dinner (mine is vegetarian tonight I'm spewing) we had a team meeting. Greg made one of the guys, Joey the 'Sheriff'. So Joey has to record any stupid things anyone does in a book and at the end of the trek each point is converted to a PNG kina and put over the bar. Greg also produced a pink dummy on some pretty ribbon, to be worn for an entire day by anyone who has the best dummy spit.  The other thing he wants us to do is take it in turns each morning to have a thought of the day and at night to talk about ourselves. Tonight the infighting and thievery over over condensed milk started. Also a lot of laughing going on. There are a few characters in our team that's for sure.


Anyway so the first day of trekking is done, I feel pretty happy, I didn't find it difficult at all and I'm feeling really strong. Apparently tomorrow is harder, both physically and emotionally. Greg said we have a lot of up uphill tomorrow.