Indonesia Tour 3

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Nabire, Papua - the jungle wall

Koteka - now I know I am back in Papua

Papua highlands - raging river, jungle and landslides

Gold mining on the Siriwo River

Bilogai WABV - Ramli, who keeps us safe at this challenging 600 m long (6960 ft elevation) airstrip

Onwards logistics - Papua style

Young love is a beautiful thing but we had serious words with the airport security guards on duty last night

Loading 46 pigs, 100 chickens, 20 ducks and 12 rabbits

Spreading coffee granules to reduce the ammonia and smell

Loading 46 pigs, 100 chickens, 20 ducks and 12 rabbits

Livestock in flight - 46 pigs, 100 chickens, 20 ducks and 12 rabbits - the noise and smell was unbelievable

Sugapa - native dancers welcoming a visiting dignitary at the airstrip

Sugapa native dancers lining up to lead the VIP procession into town

Sugapa dancers

Our Laundry Service shack.....

Our favourite Laundress.....

Nabire's Supermarket and Department Store....the Lucky

Rushhour at the fuel pumps....

Nabire - van for hire

Refuelling in the rain

WABV Bilogai Airstrip 6960 ft above sea level

Papua Highlands - Spiders

Papua highlands - 4 m wide spider's web

Papua highlands

Papua Highlands with the afternoon cloud buildup

Nabire - shop on left where I buy my mobile phone vouchers

Nabire - one of many Christian churches

Nabire - my favourite Kambing (goat) restaurant . . . with tomorrow's dinner keeping fresh

Nabire - main Mosque . . . still under construction

Nabire's tribute to the Vostok rocket - harking back to the days when the regime was close to the USSR

Nabire - our favourite seafood restaurant beside polluted river

Nabire - shops and health warning billboard

Nabire - when you just can't get enough palm trees . . . put in a fake one !

Nabire - the bank

Nabire - the CFC Crispy Fried Chicken

Nabire Airport - Old and New Control Towers

The airstrip in the Sinak Valley - very short and and very rough. A new runway is being built (crossing at a right angle) but will take years. There is frequent independence militant and bandit activity in the valley and the hill on the right is a stronghold. During times of high tension aircraft passing close to the hill while landing/taking off are shot at

When tensions are high a curved approach and a steep descent avoiding the hill controlled by militants/bandits who will shoot at you eventhough you are bringing in food, supplies and medicine for their families. The steep descent needs to be turned into a climb to touch down with a rate-of-climb on the 10% slope of the airstrip of which only 450 m is actually useable

Scenic Sinak - not a nice neighbourhood so a walk down the runway requires an escort

Scenic Sinak - with boulder on the runway

Hotel staff at their best changing a lightbulb

...if not one way, then another

Rhino beetle assisting with the loadsheet

Sinak airstrip perimeter...flag that establishes a political presence and also works as a windsock

Outside the perimeter of Sinak airstrip ...not the safest neighbourhood, so an escort is mandatory

Starting the day's flying at 0550 local time and already a monster CB is heading our way

Indonesian flavour combos never cease to amaze : green beans baked into a sweet bun

Sugapa MEDEVAC patient being handed over to ambulance crews in Nabire

Me in my new Batik Formal Shirt with our Engineers Marsel and Meli

Batik and Sunset

Crew night out at the Moon Beach Resort north of Nabire

Moon Beach Resort pier

Rhino beetle leaving the pier party early

Entering the Freeway - wind flowing around the northern boundary range

Early morning Freeway - cloudpour

Ilaga WABL - unloading a personal record-to-date 277 kg pig

Taking advantage of an unusually clear and calm day - the altimeter indicates 12,500 ft as we fly along the northern plateau bordering the Puncak Jaya

Passing over the plateau north of Puncak Jaya at 12,500 ft above sea level GoogleMaps

Puncak Jaya Indonesia's highest mountain at 16,024 ft above sea level with Carstensz Glacier just visible

Carstensz Glacier visible east of the Puncak Jaya with the northern plateau in the foreground

Passing Mil-8 ER-MGX in the Freeway at 8500 ft

Boat trip with the crew of Mil-8 ER-MGX to Nuburi island reef

Pulau Nuburi coral reef

Nuburi curiosity

Pulau Nuburi coral reef

Nuburi Clowns

Pulau Nuburi coral reef

Pulau Nuburi coral reef - predator starfish inching in for the kill

Pulau Nuburi coral reef

Nuburi Clam

Pulau Nuburi coral reef

Chief of Security for Highland Airports - employed to keep people off the runways

A gift from one of our colleagues returning from holiday : Javanese 'Blangkon' headdress which we honoured with a traditional dance

Unloading emergency building supplies in Sugapa ...urgently required after the recent unrest

Not my best pic, but not bad for through the window from 5 miles away : AMA Pilatus Porter passing low over the jungle below us in the Freeway

Eastbound at 11,500 ft through the Beoga Pass enroute to Ilaga. The Pass directly below us lies at 9300 ft and the ridge on the wingtip reaches 13,000+ and extends for 30 NM

Unloading a 180 kg pig at Ilaga WABL

CSI:Papua - the spot on the Ilaga apron where a woman walked into a TwinOtter prop two weeks previously

To prevent further tragedies, a crowd control fence has been installed

Rush hour at Ilaga WABL

AMA PAC750 PK-RCE rolling on Runway 07

PAC750 climbing away from Ilaga WABL - runway length 603 m and threshold elevation 7975 ft

Ilaga Rush hour from inside - wait till the end

Church of the Guiding Light in Kali Merah village near home-base Nabire whose size, position and angle to the sun coincide to make it shine and visible from a great distance. Even on bad weather days it is often visible thru a hole in the clouds ….and brings us safely home.

On a day off we decided to find this Guiding Light, but a wrong turn found us off the track and stuck for an hour

The 'Church of the Guiding Light', actually called 'Ecclesia' in Kali Merah village

The current church/village hall in Kali Merah with a curious congregation. The villagers have been solely funding the building of the new church hall themselves, starting in 2009

Work in progress on the new church/village hall of Kali Merah

New church/village hall under construction in Kali Merah

SusiAir Pilatus PC6 Porter on the ground at Hitadipa along the Tariku River GoogleMaps

Durian fruit - enthusiastically welcomed when in season for its flavour and mild alcoholic/hallucinogenic qualities

Bilogai Tutup = Sugapa's airstrip is closed due to rioting (difficult to see, but there is a lot of debris on the runway)

Unusual sight of gold mine helicopters PK-USA and PK-USS both under cover at the fire station for maintenance

We will be going into rough airstrips in the new year - gravel deflectors

New Year's Eve : Swiss-Serge and French-Claude as we crossed the runway to the Company fireworks party

Dutch-Remco and French-Claude on Nabire's runway heading for the Company New Year's party

Christmas [ Palm ] Tree

Our Company fireworks street party

GloStix from Glasgow are always popular

Wheelbarrow BBQ with Rapster Chef and his fish

Enjoying the fireworks while sheltering from the rain - which reduced the fire hazard to the town. The lens is not foggy - that's smoke.

The Freeway, Papua

Highland jungle in the clouds at 7000 ft elevation

Another Christmas Load

On the apron at Nabire WABI waiting for the rains to clear

Christmas Eve sunset

The yellow dot is helicopter PK-USS heading for the Bayabiru gold mine

GoPro looking down - Nabire town

Ruslan's first marshalling - close enough for a lollipop prize

GoPro looking down - Siriwo gold mine

Unloading a very large, very smelly dog

Nabire - our hotel 'Mahavira 2' is the L shaped yellow building. 'Mahavira 1' is the L shaped tin roof in front.

AMA Pilatus PC6 Porter on the ground at Bilai

Pogapa - adorned with the wrecks of two Caravans

CB with cap

Landslide - scale not obvious but that is a drop of at least 2500 ft

GoPro looking straight down - Papua jungle

GoPro looking down - Bumi river gold mines

GoPro looking down - Papua jungle

GoPro attached to the tailcone, looking down - posing with Ramli, our man in Bilogai

Freeway waterfall - seen from 3 NM and falling at least 300 ft

Freeway waterfall seen from 2 NM distance - a huge volume of water dropping at least 800 ft

Waterfall in the Freeway

Loading construction materials

Early morning insect on the apron

First thing in the morning the aircraft is always covered with insects

Early morning insect

Early morning insect - this one got under my seat, was released and then nearly got eaten by a passing bird

Loading pipes for Sugapa

Noisily unloading pipes at Sugapa

A special lunch prepared by Engineer Meli's Mum

Our aircraft seen in a cloudy Freeway at 10,500 ft

Checking the load

Papua - landslides old and new

Entering the Freeway

Bugalaga airstrip

To give a sense of scale - that dot is a Pilatus Porter going towards Bugalaga

Our next load of 700 live chickens keeping cool in the shade ....and nobody noticed the ants in the grass

Loading 700 chickens and, unwittingly, 1000s of ants - see post dated Tue30Dec14

Passing another aircraft in the Freeway - it gives a sense of the unbelievable size of the mountains

The airport staff were otherwise engaged....so we used our propwash to remove this FOD from the centre of the runway

Finally some nice pics in good weather of our aircraft in flight : Asian One Air C208B PK-LTF in the Freeway as seen from a passing SusiAir C208 in the Freeway

Asian One Air C208B PK-LTF in the Freeway at 10,500 ft

Asian One Air C208B PK-LTF in the Freeway

Asian One Air C208B PK-LTF in the Freeway at 8500 ft

Missionary John Cutts from Pogapa www.villageheartbeat.org who has served Papua for 60 years and featured on the TV Series "Worst Place to be a Pilot"

Papua - bridge still under construction

Fresh lemur anyone ?

Our Engineer Marsel in a rice paddy getting us a sample

What rice really looks like - the black and white varieties

Rushhour at WABI Nabire ...it is not unusual for several aircraft to enter the runway and backtrack at the same time, the last in line taking off first ....with the ever-present rotaries doing their own thing in the opposite direction just beside us

The jungle - some of these trees are 150 ft tall

MAF Grand Caravan PK-MAE in the Freeway

Missionary Aviation Fellowship MAF Grand Caravan in the Freeway

MAF C208B PK-MAE

The sea breeze sending moisture up over the jungle plateau east of Nabire

Going east, as the terrain rises again, cloud pouring at the entrance to the Freeway

A welcoming 'bagan' fishing platform under which two Whale sharks were feeding (although the big smiles may also have been in anticipation of the generous 'compensation' we paid for 'disrupting' their day's piscatorial efforts)

Whale shark wikipedia

Whale shark - the 'small' one 4.5 metres

Whale shark

Curious Whale shark gliding in to have a close look at me

What a guy looks like when he get's run over by a Whale shark

Whale shark - no enlargement...they come that close

Whale shark

Curious, gentle Whale shark

Whale shark

Around midday, as the surface water warmed, they just glided away into the depths

Approaching Pulau Nuburi

Pulau Nuburi

Pulau Pepaya seen from Nuburi

Pulau Nuburi - a 150 metre circle of paradise

Pulau Nuburi - fish congregating in the surf

Pulau Nuburi coral reef

Pulau Nuburi reef

Departing Pulau Nuburi

Associated Mission Aviation Pilatus PC6 Porter in the Freeway

Sling load being lifted to a remote site

Nabire, Papua, Indonesia

FOD on the strip at Bilogai. The fate of the owner remains unknown.

Fuzzy pic of a beautiful bug who got up my trouser leg. Normally this would result in a girlie scream, some leaping and leg shaking and a summary execution - but the offender was too stunning for that.

The Freeway eastbound in the early morning - the peaks in the distance reach 13,300 ft

Hand luggage - Papua style

Shorts finals for RWY09 at Bilogai - 600 m long, 6960 ft elevation & 23 degrees

Applying Reverse Thrust on landing at Bilogai WABV

A day with extensive virga

Snack vendor outside our cargo office

A fuzzy pic of cloud pouring over a 12,200 ft massif 30 NM away

Prison Break - fugitives recaptured. The one on the left made it all the way across the apron.

Catching up with AMA's Pilatus Porter PK-RCY in the Freeway

Associated Mission Aviation Pilatus PC6 Porter

Crime prevention - Papua style

An unusually clear day in the Freeway, looking South from overhead Bilai

The southern wall of the Freeway

Gold mine along the Derewo River

Nabire WABI - loading building supplies

The Freeway

Turning towards the 7400' KeyPoint (Blue-Red-Blue buildings) for Finals at Bilogai WABV

Bilogai WABV - unloading

Sugapa town

The Freeway - landslides and the Derewo River

Freeway - skirting clouds

Leaving the Freeway Westbound with the coast on the horizon

Staring descent into Nabire WABI - where the Ulawa and Siriwo Rivers meet

East of Nabire - gold mining along the Bumi River

Jungle plateau East of Nabire WABI

Approaching Nabire WABI - the coast and airport are immediately behind the 1700' ridge ahead

Joining Finals 34 at Nabire WABI

Nabire WABI

Boat trip to the uninhabited islands North-west of Nabire

Uninhabited islands 1 hour boatride NW of Nabire

Approaching Palau Babi

Pulau Babi

Pulau Babi with Pulau Ahe in the background

Pulau Babi

Pulau Ahe - with all that remains of a hotel once built on the island

Pulau Ahe - clamshells

Pulau Ahe - WW2 aircraft wreckage

Pulau Ahe reef

Nabire

Nabire WABI - Engineer Meli cleaning up the Apron

Our first passenger of the day - we rolled 10 m before he let go

GoPro Underwater - Coral Reef off Nusi Beach, Papua

Coral Reef off Nusi Beach, Papua

Heading home after Tour 3....transiting through picturesque Pattimura Airport on Ambon GoogleMaps

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END OF TOUR 3

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