Lae-cation

Last weekend we hit the only road, the Highlands Highway, traversed down the Kassam Pass and headed to the port city of Lae. If you want to experience a bit of the Kassam Pass, Google it and watch a video of it. Those 15-20 minutes of curvy, windy road send any car sick pron person into momentary misery. Just ask my son. But since we're 5200 feet up in the Highlands, there's only one way down and that's through the Pass.

Since Lae is the port city of PNG, it is the main hub for exports and imports. There are two huge grocery stores that have such a variety of goods and products that it makes decisions hard to make.
When you're normally accustomed to shopping in a store the size of a Quik Trip, having aisles of American, European, Asian and PNG products all in one place can make your head hurt and your kids bored to tears. But since kids like to eat so they muster enough patience to endure decisions on how much cheese to buy and price pointing boxes of cereal. OH...and don't forget the cream cheese. Yes, there's a cheesecake in our future!

Passed on these guys, but a typical find in the coastal stores.

Once the shopping list has been knocked out, we enjoy other unique aspect of Lae-the pool at the guesthouse. There are guesthouses for our mission throughout the country. They are much cheaper than hotels and this is the only one in the country that has a swimming pool since going to the ocean isn't really an option in Lae. The kids love the pool and all three improved their swimming skills on this trip. Pretty amazing since they're only near water about twice a year.

After a couple of days of down time, we loaded everything up in the truck we rented from the Auto Shop on center and trekked back up the mountain.

The girls keeping it real in the back seat.

On the way, we stopped at a roadside market that's only opened on Sunday. We picked up quite a bit of lowlands produce that we can't get in the Highlands. Mangoes, papaya, coconuts and one variety of banana that can only be eaten if you cook them. We like to fry them and eat them like french fries!

One coastal treat Mal loves is the "kulau" which is the young coconut that is full of coconut water. She'd much rather drink it out of the coconut than pour it in a glass!

When we got home we discovered some great news: it had rained!! The drought is far from over, but we've gotten enough rain the last few days to fill our water tank and the grass is greening up a bit. Praising God for the rain and a great, safe trip with my favorite people.