Good to be back!

It’s never an easy journey to get back to Papua and always involves what is affectionately known as the Papua Red-Eye flight. It doesn’t matter where in Papua you need to go, the only way to get there from the eastern parts of Indonesia is the overnight Garuda flight departing around 9-10pm from Jakarta and arriving between 5-7am depending on where exactly you’re going. It also stops at least once or twice en-route in Bali and/or Makassar, just to add to the sleep deprivation.

For my return to Papua this time I needed to get from Bali (where I’d been on vacation) to Biak (our maintenance base) and then fly the Porter back to Timika. That little trip involved a lovely 4 hour layover in Makassar between 9pm and 1am with nothing but a Starbucks to feed and water me.

Still, it was worth it for the sunrise departing Biak this morning en-route back to Timika:

Sunrise departing Biak, Papua

And so begins another four week tour, flying in the mountains of Papua. I can’t wait!