Diary of the 7 Summits Club expedition to Papua New Guinea, the first day of climbing the highest volcano on the continent of Australia, Mount Giluwe

The 7 Summits Club Guide Svetlana Kotlyar from Papua New Guinea:

 Day one: transfer to the Base camp at an altitude of 3700. After an early breakfast, we got into the car and went to meet our volcano Giluwe. We drove from the lodge for about an hour. Here we met with a team of our porters and guides. The main guide of them Stanley is a man of 40 years old with a fairly good English, which he learned while communicating with tourists.

 The first part of the route passed through a dense rainforest. It is almost always wet and rainy in Papua, the day before the downpour went until 2 a.m., so rubber boots, capes on backpacks and raincoats are a very important element of the outfit. Stanley deftly cut a path for us with a machete, freeing the path from unnecessary overhanging branches, at the same time telling about the culture of the locals.

 — Wet leaves of this plant can be washed, they are very refreshing. There are a lot of useful plants growing in our forests and we know how and for what they can be used.

 He showed trees whose leaves are used to build roofs of houses. We saw a beautiful Bird of paradise, which is a symbol of the country. We are as much a curiosity to Papuans as they are to us. The locals are watching us with great interest, looking at clothes and various little things that are familiar to us, but unfamiliar to them.

 After a couple of hours of trekking, we left the forest and got into a meadow area, walking parallel to the river. The ground under our feet is quite swampy, but on the first day we did not use rubber boots, we managed with trekking shoes. The entire track took about 6 hours, about 13 km long with a climb drop of 1000 m. Closer to three o'clock in the afternoon, the rain began and continued until 2 a.m., forcing us to worry about tomorrow's exit to the mountain.