Day 4 - Templetons Crossing to Diggers Camp

Pretty tough again sleeping last night. Rained heavily on the metal roof of the hut. Andrew was suffering a little from the runs - maybe from the water. Quick breakfast of muesli bars and hot cup of soup. Great way to start the day. Packed lunch near top of pack. We normally had mountain bread and cheese, peanut butter and tuna sachets for lunch.

Caught up with another tour group this am, Peregrine Adventures. Turns out that our guide Tony is the brother in law of James, their tour guide !

Was amazing in general how many porters Tony knew as we were walking along the track. Tony has walked the track over fifty times and has worked for many of the companies.

All of the porters on the Peregrine tour came from Menari, Jame's home town.

Today, we walked over Mt Bellamy, via the Kokoda gap. Here is a view through over the Gap. Is quite a challenging walk up to the Gap !

We arrived at 1900 at around 11.30am for lunch. A very nice site with colorful gardens.

A refreshing swim in the Efogi river after lunch. The water was real cold up there !

A great Pandanas tree growing in the campsite grounds. Note the unusual tree roots

We turned south at Propeller Junction to head down to the B25 crash site. This bomber crashed on December 5th, 1942.

The Bomber left a massive whole in the ground on impact. This has now become a small lake.

Other parts of the bomber are still strewn about the site

The owner of the site charges $K10 for visitors to view the site.

We arrived at Diggers Camp at 2pm. A very pretty campsite with colorful flowers.

Our hut at Diggers had a dirt floor. We grabbed some fronds to put on the ground to keep our mattresses off the ground.

After setting up our beds for the night, we headed up without packs to see the Myola plains. This is where "biscuit" bombers dropped supplies during the war on the dry lake bed. This ammunition dump is one of the many storage areas dug up by the locals after the war. Made us quite nervous as some of the trekkers picked up and played with the ammunition. One would hope it is inert, but you can never be to sure. One of the guides mentioned that village children love lighting fires and throwing mortars or grenades into the fire and running like hell !!!

Looking out across the Myola Plains.

 Whilst we were looking out over the plains, one of the guides spotted a wild pig running through the grass some kilometres away. The porters sprinted off after it. Quite funny really as we were so far away but this did not bother them one bit. We were hoping for roast pig that night, but was not to be !

Above is a picture of our hut floor with palm frond bedding. Also, the fire warming us up.

Here is a picture of (luckily) our only injury of the walk. Andrew lost a toenail whilst walking about the campsite in Alola without his thongs.