Today was our last day in Papua New Guinea. A night journey of 220 nautical miles had brought us to Vanimo – the Northern-most city of PNG, less than 20km from the border to the Indonesian part of the island and the capital of the West Sepik province (aka Sandaun province – where the sun goes down in PNG). With about 12000 inhabitants and good infrastructure (incl. government, shops, banks, an airport, hospital, schools etc.) Vanimo can easily be considered a proper city. Main product and economic driver of the region is wood.

We were certainly an attraction here, with many people at the beach, watching us as we got ashore and (for a bit of a change) taking photos of us.I spent the morning, looking around town, to get a feeling for it – before taking a shuttle bus over to Lido village and its beach. After a walk around the village it was back on a bus on to a zodiac for the (wet) journey back to the ship.