Virtual Kokoda Trail: Day 6...Completing the Journey

A sign near yesterday's camp

COURAGE

ENDURANCE

MATESHIP

SACRIFICE


It seemed to sum up this entire journey.

Today would be our final day.

Those of us who requested carvings from our Porters would receive them at the Track's end.

Souvenirs.

I declined this...opting instead for a single kina to remember PNG (and Tooh...who often sighed "Another day...another kina.")

I am going to put it on a plain leather cord to wear around my neck.

A proper breakfast and we start on the last 10 miles.

Eleven water crossings between us and the Kokoda Plateau...most bridged by the ramshackled bamboo, rope and vine affairs we have crossed repeatedly on  the track.

"When the rainy seasons come most of them are washed away  and must be rebuilt each year." Tooh explained.

No one falls in. Bridges hold fast.

And at last we cross the eleventh

(...I know as Woody has been counting each one, out loud...)

A small rise...and then we see the flat grassy approach to Kokoda.

It seems almost anti-climatic after the past 6 days.

When we pass under the black arches at Kokodo there is a burst of exhuberation from our group...

WE'VE MADE IT!

Not the high of the five months spent on the Appalachian Trail and finally climbing Katahdin but a rush, nonetheless...

The people of Kokoda are smiling, happily waving us in. There are orange sodas in cold water for us and a woman who is passing a large tray of fresh cut up pineapple.

And we have made it.

All of us...even the Porters, I suspect,  are ready to be back to civilization, and the comforts we have foregone for the past 6 days.

(...only Woody seems to not share this sentiment and I half expect to turn around and see him disappearing silently back into his rain-forest...his natural habitat...)

I want dark chocolate, good food, a comfortable bed, candles and a bubble bath.

Monk seems to have made peace with the loss of his father, here. And that is good.

I have learned that Military Tourism is not really my cup of tea.

Or a Mark Twain once remarked about Golf

"A Good Walk Spoiled."

Not spoiled, in this case, but definitely a omni-present distraction, and definitely at times depressing/unsettling.

And I won't be eating Spam for the foreseeable future, either...

And in Tok Pisin we say

Gutbai Lukim yu binhain

(Goodbye & Good Luck)