Mt Hagen Show & Crocodile Festival Tour13 Night Tour includes Wewak, Kairiru Island, Middle and Upper Sepik (Crocodile Festival, Mt Hagen Show, Simbai and Madang. Limited spaces remain for this fully escorted tour, with a maximum of 16 guests.
The Mt Hagen Show is Papua New Guinea’s largest cultural extravaganza. The Show has its origins in colonial days when colonial administrators sought to reduce tribal fighting by promoting inter-marriage and channelling inter-tribal rivalry into positive forms of competition. Major sing-sing events like the Mt Hagen Show and Goroka Show became opportunities for tribes to gain status without bloodshed, by competing to put on the best cultural performance. The Mt Hagen Show today is still a competition, with tribal groups vying for sizeable cash prizes and of course the honour and glory that first prize at the “Hagen Show” brings to one’s tribe. The Show attracts cultural groups from all over Papua New Guinea, even from Bougainville and the Trobriand Islands. The local crowds of 50,000 mainly flock in from the Highlands provinces plus Madang and Lae as these are the only places with road access to Mt Hagen. In contrast, less than 300 overseas visitors attended the 2008 Show, so it is still definitely a “local” festival and not something put on for tourists. There are also agricultural and trade displays, health awareness programs, sideshow alley and all manner of other activities at the Show which make it the highlight of the annual calendar for the Highlands people. Some very remote villagers come to town only once per year, for the Show, so you will see quite a kaleidoscope of faces just in the spectator crowd, even before you turn your attention to the sing-sing arena.
Tourists and locals with cameras are given special seats with the best view, and you will also have permission to enter the performance arena to take close-ups of the dancers. Apart from the Show itself, our tour group will also attend another, smaller sing-sing on the day before. This is held at Paiya Village about half an hour’s drive out of town, is more informal without the huge crowds, and provides an authentic village backdrop for photography, with opportunities for watching the performers putting on their make-up and body decorations before the performance. Before and after the Mt Hagen Show we visit some interesting destinations in Papua New Guinea’s northern and highlands regions: volcanic Kairiru Island, the Sepik River, exotic Simbai and PNG’s prettiest town, Madang. The Sepik River leg involves climbing in and out of canoes, a bit of walking, and sleeping in tents and village huts, so a little agility is required. This sector now includes the Sepik Crocodile Festival at Ambunti on the Upper Sepik. This provides an opportunity to attend a rural festival crowded by locals rather than tourists. The 2009 festival was culturally spectacular – the best rural festival we have witnessed in ten years of operating. |
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