jorgesanchez's travel recommendations

Bougainville Island belongs, in theory, to Papua New Guinea and can be reached from Port Moresby by plane, but there is a more direct way to get there, by speedboat from the neighbour island of Shortland, in the Solomon, to Koromira, in Bougainville. The journey took me 4 hours. That part of the island is controlled by the Bougainville Revolutionary Party. I was allowed to visit Arawa, the main town, and the port of Kieta. I visited the Panguna copper mine, one of the biggest in the world, but when tried to get to Buka Island I was denied the authorization and thus resolved to get back to Shortland, then Gizo, Santa Isabel, Guadalcanal, Santa Cruz, etc. When I was in Bougainville there were no hotels and you had to get accommodation in the Missions thanks to the generosity of the German priests. People practise cargo cultism. The island owns its name after the French explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainville (yes, the same who gave his name to the lovely Bougainville flower).

Address: near Arawa, Bougainville island Arawa Papua New Guinea Phone: + no available E-mail: noavailable@yahoo.com Price: budget