Moss & Mushrooms – A Rainforest Walk

smw, slt has now been back in PNG for three weeks, after our lovely lazy long holiday in Los Angeles. Much is happening on the work front which has kept me busy and often feeling rather overwhelmed. Thus the usual Sunday outing during my extended visit to Tari this past week was very welcome: we went to Ambua Lodge and walked around their ravine and rainforest during a rain that ranged from quite strong to dripping mist, over the course of our couple-hour ramble. I got into the mood of it – so long as I’d be ending muddy and wet regardless, I decided to disengage my brain from daily mundane worries and look at all the layers and varieties of life packed into each square centimeter of ground, tree and even air that I could find. Hope you enjoy these views of  a wet walk through the rainforest near Tari.

This mossy hollow by the path felt like the kind of place where, in a fantasy story, you’d find the hidden entrance to another world.

…And often, as in the case of this mushroom and moss-bedecked tree, or the long red hanging berries (anyone know what those are??), I couldn’t decide which angle or close-up I found most fascinating for viewing it. So you get both…hope it doesn’t bore you.

In 9th grade biology class I was required to design a controlled experiment of my own – this was a first for me. I recall that my experiment involved, among a few other kinds of plants, New Guinea impatiens – which you see, above, in their native habitat. Who knew that … thirty-five years later?! … I’d end up on the other side of the world seeing them in their native land? Below you see what I think of as the departure lounge at Tari Airstrip, where I waited for 2.5 hours for a delayed flight on Thursday only to get cut off as darling AirNuigini decided, for reasons unknown, not to let everyone with boarding cards board. You wonder why I don’t encourage my friends to come here for tourist reasons, much as I’m obviously enjoying it as a work location for myself? Among other reasons, its air travel situation requires more patience & flexibility than most people want to need on vacation — even Americans who’ve adapted to the farce that is air travel in the US these days.