{"id":6506,"date":"2019-10-05T23:19:27","date_gmt":"2019-10-05T23:19:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/?p=6506"},"modified":"2019-10-05T23:44:01","modified_gmt":"2019-10-05T23:44:01","slug":"dodge-city-vanimo-png","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/?p=6506","title":{"rendered":"Dodge City – Vanimo, PNG"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Approaching Vanimo on the mainland we\u2019re full of apprehension – a bit like Manus Island, it has a bad reputation amongst yachties. In the last few years there\u2019ve been several reports of boats being boarded and robbed at night. If we didn\u2019t need to get our Indonesian visas here we\u2019d be giving it a big miss, but we have no choice. So our plan is to get in and out in the same day if possible to avoid an overnight stay. It feels akin to riding into Dodge City to face the outlaws.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

We\u2019d intended to arrive on Monday 17th September but while in the Ninigos we discover it\u2019s Independence Day, a national holiday. There\u2019s also been a lot of political unrest in Papua recently, so it wouldn\u2019t be a good day to arrive.  Instead we leave late Sunday afternoon, aiming for a slow sail to get us in early Tuesday morning. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Huey, of course, has other ideas – what a cruel irony that we have fantastic conditions for a fast sail. It almost makes us cry having to slow the boat down.  As it is, we still arrive in the dark in the wee hours of Tuesday morning (what was that about never doing a night entry again??) and have to carefully pick our way into the harbour past the huge bulk cargo carriers.  We drop the pick and set about removing everything off the decks that could possibly be pilfered.  We turn on the motion sensor lights which illuminate the rear steps and lock ourselves in for a not very restful few hours sleep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
anchored near the end of the runway at Vanimo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Come morning we\u2019re up early in order to get to the Indonesian Consulate when it opens.  We leave the dinghy near the wharf where a security guard promises to keep an eye on it in return for a can of Fanta. No problem! The day goes like clockwork – we present ourselves to the Consulate with all our paperwork and they tell us to return at 2pm to collect our visas. From there we walk back into town and find a taxi-driver to take us to Customs, Quarantine and Immigration in order to check out of PNG.  Everyone is exceptionally friendly and welcoming and we start to feel bad about judging the place so harshly.  I guess everywhere has its\u2019 bad elements, but we\u2019ve been pleasantly surprised by our short stay in Vanimo.  We even have time to get some provisioning done before heading back to the Consulate. With the precious visas in our passports, we head back to the boat and we\u2019re on our way out of there by 4.30pm. Not a bad day\u2019s work!  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have some trouble getting the starboard motor into gear as we\u2019re raising the anchor, and we\u2019re soon to discover the reason. But that\u2019s a story for another time \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
some parts of the harbour are quite pretty<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Approaching Vanimo on the mainland we\u2019re full of apprehension – a bit like Manus Island, it has a bad reputation amongst yachties. In the last few years there\u2019ve been several reports of boats being boarded and robbed at night. If we didn\u2019t need to get our Indonesian visas here we\u2019d be giving it a big … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Dodge City – Vanimo, PNG”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-svtoucan"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6B46t-1GW","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6506"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6515,"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6506\/revisions\/6515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}