Our trip to Papua New Guinea (PNG) started out with a few days in Cairns in late September along the Great Barrier reef to allow for the jet lag to settle. We had flown 10 hours to Honolulu, another 7.5 to Guam, then another 4.5 to Cairns (flying over PNG all the while).  We stayed in a nice place, the Rihga Colonial Club. The Aussies were very nice and very excited about the Olympics which were underway 1500 miles to the South in Sydney at the time.
After spending two days there, we departed on our Air Niugini flight to the capital, Port Moresby. This was about 80 minutes, a sprint by comparison. We connected to Rabaul, on Northeastern New Britain Island in Northern PNG (see map).
	This is what we were greeted with. It hade been erupting since 1994.  The old town of Rabaul was covered with 20+ feet of ash and the government had spent millions moving the town upwind of the volcano.  We spent an afternoon at a resort and then boarded Peter Hughes M/V Star Dancer.
The boat is 120 feet long with a 23 foot beam. There were 14 passengers along, including our good friends Karlheinz and Mary from Capetown
The diving was pretty good, but not great.  The boat could only make 8.5 knots with one engine (other was kaput).  We, therefore only spent 3 days at Father's reef.  Father's was great with 150-250 foot visibility.  The first and the last day, we dove in the Binings (sp?).  Here the water was murky and with far fewer fish.  Saw some wild nudibranchs and the world's smallest seahorse (about the size of a grain of rice; see 2 shots below in pink). Most of the crew was great and, as usual, we met some interesting people from all over.  Click on the thumbnails below to check out some shots I took on the diving portion before you go onto Tari, in the Southern highlands.  Jeff and Dawn are some of the only above water shots since they were on their honeymoon!