Walking with Ghosts in Papua New Guinea: Crossing the Kokoda Trail in the Last Wild Place on Earth

by Rick Antonson

Overview

Acclaimed travel writer Rick Antonson (Full Moon Over Noah’s Ark) tackles his most challenging adventure yet: a formidable trail through the remote jungles of Papua New Guinea.
 
Rick Antonson has traveled to parts of the world that are not simply exotic but sometimes damned near inaccessible. He has climbed to the summit of Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey, traveling beyond to Iraq and Iran and Armenia. He has undertaken an improbable overland journey to the ancient city of Timbuktu, an enlightening look into efforts to preserve the city’s priceless manuscripts. Now he has traversed the notorious Kokoda Trail in Papua New Guinea, a country some call “the last wild place on earth.”

The trail is a narrow, 60-mile footpath featuring rough jungle, 6,000 feet in elevation change, and punishing weather extremes. In a country unfairly locked in Western misperceptions, the track is inhospitable terrain yet home to hospitable indigenous peoples, who live among the rusting reminders of the Japanese, Australian, and American armies that clashed in some of the deadliest protracted combat of World War II.

In Walking With Ghosts in Papua New Guinea, Antonson shares a journey of physical and mental endurance in his inimitable way, in the company of a mixed band of resolute adventurers, blending fascinating historical context with the tribulations of unexpected discoveries in faraway lands.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781510705661
Publisher:	Skyhorse
Publication date:	09/10/2019
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Rick Antonson is the author of Route 66 Still Kicks: Driving America's Main Street, To Timbuktu for a Haircut: A Journey Through West Africa, Full Moon Over Noah's Ark: An Odyssey to Mount Ararat, and Walking With Ghosts in Papua New Guinea: Crossing the Kokoda Trail in the Last Wild Place on Earth. Rick is a past chair of Destination International, based in Washington, D.C. and past deputy chair of the Pacific Asia Travel Association based in Bangkok, and the former president and CEO of Tourism Vancouver. He and his wife Janice live in Predator Ridge in Canada’s Okanagan Valley.

Table of Contents

List of Maps

1 Asia Pacific region today viii

2 Island of New Guinea and vicinity x-xi

3 Papua New Guinea (portion of New Guinea) featuring the Kokoda Trail 20-21

4 Profile of the Kokoda Trail 68-69

1 Miles from Nowhere 1

2 Coffee at the End of the World 23

3 Beyond Forget 71

4 Nearest Faraway Place 183

Afterword. Better Beckons 229

Acknowledgements 237

About the Author 241

Sources and Recommendations 243

Permissions 247

Index 248

Editorial Reviews

2019-06-23
A wild and forbidding terrain reveals its dramatic history.

Vancouver-based travel writer Antonson (Full Moon Over Noah's Ark: An Odyssey to Mount Ararat and Beyond, 2016, etc.) vividly recounts a two-week, 60-mile journey on the formidable Kokoda Trail in Papua New Guinea, a rugged terrain marked by jungle, bogs, gullies, cliffs, malarial mosquitoes, rigorous ascents, and steep, slippery descents. After accepting a neighbor's invitation to go on the trek, the author discovered some unsettling rumors about the region: Crime was rampant, gangs marauded, and hostile native tribes were known to attack. Port Moresby, where the walk would start, had been ranked "among the world's most unlivable cities." But the chance to see breathtaking vistas, "awe-inspiring foliage," and sites known only to Papuans and trekkers lured him. "If the demands of the trek didn't kill us (as they had others in recent years)," writes the author, "we'd have the trip of a lifetime." In preparation for the arduous demands of the hike, he and his neighbor practiced power-walking on sand and climbing steep hills in the Australian rainforest; he made sure all his vaccinations were up to date; and, to sate his curiosity, read up on Papua's history. Papua, the world's second-largest island, had been a critical battleground during World War II, "the lynchpin" that decisively foiled Japan's plan to position itself to attack Australia. Although many battlefields change over time, the Kokoda Trail "was almost identical now to then" and evoked a clear sense of its violent past. Antonson and his party of trekkers and porters found unexploded bombs, rusted Japanese hand grenades, chipped helmets, and shallow foxholes. With the ghosts of Japanese, American, Papuan, and Australian soldiers always hovering, the author had a palpable sense of "the dismay their earthly beings must have felt in all of this." As intensely as he responded to the natural surroundings, he also felt a growing disgust with "war's inherent vulgarities."

An absorbing account of a physically and spiritually challenging journey.

Kirkus Reviews

"Walking With Ghosts In Papua New Guinea is among the best travel narratives I have read. Rick Antonson beautifully creates a sense of the environment in New Guinea as well as the local people he encountered. He effortlessly weaves in the dramatic wartime history of the Kokoda Trail as his party treks across rushing streams and up and down the mountainous terrain. I highly recommend this book to armchair travelers anxious to experience life in a truly wild, and in many ways primitive, world."
—James P. Duffy, author of War at the End of the World

"Antonson vividly recounts a two-week, 60-mile journey on the formidable Kokoda Trail in Papua New Guinea . . . An absorbing account of a physically and spiritually challenging journey." —Kirkus Reviews
 
Praise for Rick Antonson
"Antonson is an evocative and perceptive travel writer."
—Booklist

“It’s not just about the journey, or standard travel writing. It’s about story-telling, and Rick takes us on a magical, almost mystical adventure to destinations once only shrouded in mythology.”
—Peter Greenburg, travel editor, CBS News, on Full Moon Over Noah’s Ark
 
“The remarkable combination of Rick Antonson exploring the ancient mysteries of Timbuktu matched with the rich culture of Mali that he captures so well . . . makes a page-turner from start to finish.”
—Jerry W. Bird, editor, Africa Travel Magazine on To Timbuktu for a Haircut
 
“One of the best books of the bunch.”
—The New York Times, 2012 holiday travel book roundup on Route 66 Still Kicks

From the Publisher