Destination Truth: Memoirs of a Monster Hunter

by Josh Gates

  All of Port Moresby’s deficits are a particular shame, since the rest of the country is one of the best adventure destinations on earth. This is a place where the long arm of tourism hasn’t fully reached, where tribal culture prevails, and the rusted relics of World War II are still on full display. Plus, this tropical wonderland is brimming with uncataloged biodiversity. Each year dozens of new species are discovered in the nearly impenetrable jungles; scientists often refer to these archipelagos as a “lost world.”

  This is our first and most ambitious stop of the season. We’ve come here to investigate three cryptozoological fugitives: a mermaid that has been spotted near the Papuan island of New Ireland for generations, as well as two different living dinosaurs purported to inhabit nearby New Britain Island. As outlandish as these creatures might sound, PNG, as it’s known, would certainly be the sort of place to harbor them.

  We begin our investigation into the mermaid story, conducting a few interviews at the local university. Our time in the crime-stricken capital is thankfully brief, though, and before long we’re off to the airport for our flight to New Ireland. The process of checking in is unabashed chaos. The concept of a line hasn’t really caught on in this corner of the world, and every passenger on every Air Niugini flight simply mobs the counters from any available angle, waving his or her ticket in the air. We somehow manage to tag our bags, run down the tarmac, and board the plane.

  The beat-up turboprop sputters up over the crystalline waters of the Bismarck Archipelago and the New Guinea Highlands. I gawk down at the virgin jungles with amazement. The more than one million people that inhabit this part of the country weren’t even discovered by the outside world until the 1930s. There are whispers that cannibalism, popular here for centuries, may still be ritually practiced.

  At the tiny airport in Kavieng, we step down from the plane and into the blistering sunshine. Our bags are taken out of the hold of the plane and simply strewn along the tarmac, along with a dead body. I hear wails and crying from locals pressed up against the chain-link fence at the arrivals terminal as the crude coffin is moved out of the heat. It’s a distressing sight and a portentous introduction to the island.

  After collecting our gear, we meet Lucas, our Papuan liaison, who is supposed to help facilitate our presence here. With his thick bristled moustache and short legs, he looks a little bit like Super Mario as he scampers across the tarmac, out of breath. His mouth and facial hair are covered in a thick bloodred juice, and just as he’s about to shake my hand, he literally doubles over and drops to the ground with dizziness. This is my introduction to buai.

  The chewing of this bizarre combination of ingredients is nothing short of a national addiction in PNG. Also immensely popular throughout the Pacific and Southeast Asia, buai is actually the fourth most consumed drug on the planet after nicotine, alcohol, and caffeine. A seemingly random recipe of betel nut, mustard stick, and lime (the chemical, not the fruit) is combined and chewed, producing torrential amounts of bright red saliva, which Papuans spit on just about every surface in sight. While it’s used universally as a mild pick-meup, its narcotic effects seem to render the population in a daze. I wait patiently for Lucas to regain his footing and look over as our pilot and copilot leave the aircraft; both men’s mouths are stained red, and they spit liberally on the tarmac. I’m suddenly feeling lucky to have landed in one piece.

  The jeeps we arranged aren’t at the airstrip for some reason, but Lucas promises that they’re en route. While we wait, Lucas introduces me to two local cops who will accompany us on the expedition. Steve and I exchange a wary look as the two men present themselves. Both have buai spit stains on their shirts, and neither looks much like a police officer. I ask one of them to show me his gun, which he unholsters and places in my hand. I look down at a rusted Smith & Wesson revolver that appears to have been pried out of the dead hand of Wyatt Earp. I pop open the ancient cylinder to discover that all of the chambers are empty. I ask him if he has any ammo, and he fishes through his breast pocket to produce a handful of loose change and two bullets. One isn’t even the right caliber.

  The jeeps finally arrive, but actually getting out of town is a challenge. I’ve experienced “island time” in my travels, but Papuans have taken ass dragging to a whole new level. It takes an hour to get the jeeps fueled and another hour to buy a few loaves of bread and bottled water. The estimated drive time to Nokon Village, the epicenter of supposed mermaid activity, is eleven hours, and we haven’t even started. My watch reads 3:00 p.m. It isn’t overly safe to drive through these jungles after dark, but we have little choice at this point. I’m just hopeful the local cops can use their one good bullet to put down any form of rebellion we might meet along the way.

  The first few hours are a dream. Small villages glide by, and a riot of green rushes past the windows. Along the road, locals emerge from the brush, almost all of them carrying enormous machetes. Even the children are well armed. Still, they wave excitedly as we pass by, then recede in a cloud of dust and smiles. Eventually, however, the road falls apart, and we lose ten to fifteen kilometers per hour to absorb the bumps.

  As darkness sets in, the machete-wielding villagers suddenly seem a bit more ominous when they appear in our headlight beams; most of the population retreats away from the road altogether. We finally call it quits in a nondescript village in the middle of God knows where. There’s not much to see here, but we’ve been told there’s a rough guesthouse to call home for the night. As we unload our gear into the basic cement rooms, I can hear a distant preacher yelling through a megaphone somewhere in the jungle. After settling in, we hit up what passes for a neighborhood bar, a thatched-roof hut with a transistor radio and a few wooden chairs. We gulp down warm South Pacific brand beers, and Neil and I throw a few rounds of darts onto a tattered board. The only food being served is some sort of mystery sausage that tastes gamey and dry. Possibly goat meat. But out here, who knows?

  We eventually stroll back over to the guesthouse, tired, drunk, and happy. I stand on the porch looking out into the jungles, an empty beer bottle dangling between my fingers. Suddenly, every single light in the village clicks off. The whir of the town’s only generator spins down to silence and is replaced by the stinging buzz of insects. The power is gone for the night. Even the preacher has called it quits. There’s an immediacy to the stillness that’s unnerving. I use a headlamp to navigate back to my room and drift off to sleep in the pitch-black night.

  Up before the sun (and well before the generator), we pack quietly and hit the road—or what’s left of it. By mid-morning we finally arrive in Nokon Village. We’re totally off the grid now. There’s no power, no running water, and only tribal law. Our jeeps are immediately swamped by machete-carrying locals who greet us warmly and welcome us to the village. Some of the children seem scared; no doubt they haven’t seen many “dim dims,” or white people, in these parts.

  Steve acts as a vital go-between, since he can speak the native Tok Pisin, a pidgin English. For those who have never had the confused pleasure of encountering this hand-me-down language, it is genuinely bizarre. It consists largely of English words picked up by laborers and then repurposed throughout the Pacific as a unique language. Though the vocabulary sounds familiar, without an understanding of pidgin idioms, it’s gibberish. For instance, a helicopter is called a “Mixmaster belong ’em Jesus.” A “Mixmaster” is a blender with spinning blades and “belong ’em Jesus” refers to the fact that these aircraft seemingly appear from the heavens. To ask someone’s age one would say, “How many Christmas you?” To move quickly is to “hariup” (hurry up). A “Do not disturb” sign would read “Yu no ken kam insait” (You cannot come inside). While Steve is translating, a local picks up a pair of our binoculars and calls them “glasses belong ’em kaptin,” a reference to colonial sailors from centuries past. In short, the language is bonkers.

  I try to follow along, but half the time it sounds like they’re drunk or talking shit about me.

/>   We ask to speak to the village chief, who then comes loping out of a nearby grass hut. A stocky, white-haired old man with his mouth stained bright red and naturally, he’s wearing a decades-old Donkey Kong baseball cap. Not exactly Hiawatha. Still, he’s the elder of the community, and his favor is critical to our expedition. In PNG, even the elected officials defer to these traditional leaders. And considering the fifty machetes within our twenty-foot radius, if the boss here doesn’t approve of our presence, we’ll be leaving quickly. Fortunately, he’s more than happy to see us, spitting a huge wad of saliva on the ground to smile broadly with his few remaining teeth. He leads us into the main village, a scattered collection of huts along a sandy beach. We sit with the villagers and discuss the mysterious sightings.

  For years, people here have seen what we would call a mermaid, though the Papuans refer to it as a “Ri.” Specifically, they see a figure bobbing at the surface of the water, which then descends beneath the waves. When pressed to actually describe the creature, however, the witnesses defer to the generic image of a beautiful nymph. The interviews illuminate one of the critical lessons learned while making Destination Truth: that truth itself is relative. Our Western obsession with objectivity and demonstrable evidence holds little sway in certain cultures. Places like Papua New Guinea have sliding scales when it comes to the value and interpretation of events. In this community, oral tradition is sacrosanct, and a storyteller’s narrative is true regardless of whether it’s factual. There’s little need for empirical evidence. It’s simply not a part of their belief system.

  We hear a story about a man in possession of mermaid bones that (unsurprisingly) turns out to be hard to confirm. We’re then told that the bones are actually buried between two palm trees on the beach, and while I have little hope of finding anything, my team and I take turns digging, to the sheer delight of the locals. It’s not that they don’t believe in the creature: they absolutely do. Ardently. They just can’t imagine why anyone would toil in the hot sun for evidence. The longer I dig, the more I agree with them.

  Coming up empty-handed, we attempt to verify additional sightings by scuba diving in the waters of nearby Elizabeth Bay. We explore untouched corals and hover over the carcasses of massive troop transport boats from World War II. The underwater investigation, while breathtaking, yields no actual mermaid sightings.

  Back onshore, however, we do see something significant bobbing at the surface, which, for an instant, appears humanoid. Careful observation reveals that it’s something else entirely. The animal is a dugong: a marine mammal, relative of the manatee, and a strong candidate for what the locals are seeing. Additional research reveals that the dugong species is of the scientific order Sirenia. Sirenia are named for the Sirens of Greek mythology, since it is theorized that Mediterranean sailors historically mistook manatees as, you guessed it, mermaids. But the question remains: How did remote Papuans in the Pacific come to perfectly describe a creature from Greek mythology? The answer lies in the same cultural cross-pollination that makes pidgin such a bizarre hybrid language.

  As the war’s Pacific theater unfolded on Papua New Guinea’s shores, the local population struggled to make sense of modern boats and futuristic-looking aircraft. Tribes famously created “cargo cults,” believing that arriving food rations and military gear were actually from God and meant for the Papuans themselves. They believed the soldiers were intercepting these holy supplies, and, in an effort to cut out the middleman, locals hastily constructed useless boat docks and primitive airstrips in the hopes that more cargo would simply, well, show up. These coveted supplies offered clues to a world that these people never knew existed. Many shipments included cans of tuna fish, on which they would have noticed the same logo that persists on packaging to this day: a reclining mermaid. The villagers in PNG are simply carrying on a muddled tradition of misidentification as old as Homer himself. So the next time you’re at the supermarket buying a can of Chicken of the Sea, take stock of the power of myth.

  Satisfied at our explanation of the Papuan mermaid, we turn to face another creature on the nearby island of New Britain. The daylong drive back to the airport in Kavieng is going to knock us off schedule, so we decide to simply travel in a direct line, taking a boat between the two islands. I’m advised that the crossing can be rough and should be attempted just before dawn.

  We wake up at 3:30 a.m. under the cover of darkness and haul our equipment down to the beach. It’s pouring, and even with rain gear, we’re drenched in minutes. I hike down over the rocks to get a look at the water; what I see is not overly encouraging. The ocean is dark and churning, and the banana boats the locals sourced don’t look particularly seaworthy. We try to wait out the rain for another half hour, but it’s relentless. Finally, we give it a go. We lash the gear under tarps and carry the boats to the water’s edge. It’s hard to tell if the ocean is getting worse or if the morning light is just revealing how bad the conditions really are. Either way, we don’t last long. After struggling to make it across the breakers, Neil and I take a rogue wave to the face. About $10,000 worth of gear is destroyed in an instant. We return to shore. So much for the boat idea.

  Back on land, we dry off as the sun begins to break. The ocean remains rough, and the swells are worse than ever. I ask the villagers if there’s a field in the area. One of the locals guides us to an abandoned World War II airstrip. We tag the coordinates on GPS and fire up a satellite phone, eventually linking to a helicopter pilot on the other island. While we wait for a chopper, the locals paint my face using their stained saliva. It smells awful, but they’re enjoying it too much for me to argue. Finally, we hear the sound of spinning blades and wave our arms at the approaching helicopter. Belong ’em Jesus, indeed.

  I climb into the front compartment, the crew hops in the back, and away we go. As we gain altitude, the entire island steadily resolves into a tapestry of palm trees and thatched roofs. The Duke of York Islands roll by as we course above the frothy waves and deep blue sea. As we approach New Britain, my eyes widen at plumes of menacing smoke that billow out of three active volcanoes. We arc around one of the larger cones, which, until fairly recently, was entirely underwater. In the 1800s it exploded up from the depths, and when it finally quieted, there was a new island here. Maps had to be redrawn. The large town of Rabaul constructed shortly after was one of PNG’s most cosmopolitan but also an astonishingly poor choice of real estate. In 1994 the inevitable finally happened.

  A brutal eruption devastated Rabaul, with rocks the size of cars raining down over the city and heavy ash crushing most of the buildings. Today it is a chalky, abandoned ghost town resting peacefully in the shadow of still-smoldering giants. Six hundred feet away, a new Rabaul is springing up, unwilling to learn from the mistakes of its past.

  Our helicopter lands on the outskirts of the ruined city. We are immediately presented with a hefty bill for our last-minute helicopter extraction, which Neil and I promptly charge to the network. We’re here to search for an iguanodon-like dinosaur that locals have reported seeing in the nearby jungles. Our mission is straightforward: head to the remote village where the creature was spotted, interview the locals, and attempt to figure out what they saw.

  We meet with the town mayor, who directs us out of town and kindly insists on loaning us an additional security guard. As the mayor diplomatically prattles on about how I’m going to love the unspoiled rain forests and friendly natives, I can’t help but notice that my new escort is carrying a fully automatic machine gun. We drive out of Rabaul past ash-covered ruins on streets lined with charred palm trees. Above the blackened foliage, I notice the volcano belch out a cloud of vapor and cross my fingers that I’m not about to find myself in a Roland Emmerich movie.

  After orchestrating the attack on Pearl Harbor, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto moved his base of operations to Rabaul. By 1941, this entire island was overrun with more than 100,000 Japanese soldiers. Today there are still lingering reminders of this bloody past all around us. The na
tural vegetation is broken up by huge gun turrets and scattered mechanical debris. By the side of the road I notice a graveyard and a long-abandoned execution area. It’s a disquieting sight and we continue on in silence.

  The muddy road slits the jungle like a knife but becomes more and more compromised by the encroaching foliage. By the time we make it to our destination, the ground is barely visible. We step out of the jeeps into a clearing where I can make out a loose arrangement of huts. I also hear the sound of beating drums, which brings a smile to my face. We’re about to be given a proper welcome. The villagers emerge, and we’re surrounded by traditional painted dancers clad with necklaces of dried flowers. As the drumming picks up pace and the dancers encircle my team, I stand amazed at the vivid eruption of culture.

  Since the whole scene feels a bit like the arrival at Skull Island in King Kong, we’re doing our best to ingratiate ourselves. The quickest way to fit in here is also the simplest; my crew and I agree to partake in a mouthful of buai. As the entire village looks on in delight, we make an earnest if pathetic attempt to chew the nearly inedible betel nut as drool comes spilling out of our mouths. We spit the juice out onto the ground, which is already stained red as far as the eye can see. The power of the bitter concoction hits us first-timers like a ton of bricks, and within minutes we’re all high as kites and stumbling around like a pack of fools. Marc Carter is dancing like a chicken, Neil is reeling and can barely stand, and the entire village laughs their collective ass off. For the next ten generations, they’ll probably be talking about the white idiots who came to their village one day.