Lake Sentani and Jayapura

A Lake Of Stilt Villages And Bark Cloth Painters Below The Hill From Which MacArthur Directed The New Guinea Campaign; The Gateway To The Baliem Valley · Jayapura, Papua

Lake Sentani spreads below the hills behind JAYAPURA, dotted with islands and with VILLAGES BUILT ON STILTS OUT OVER THE WATER - Asei, Ayapo, Abar - where people still make the bark-cloth paintings that are the region's distinctive art, beating bark flat and painting it with fish, spirals and ancestral motifs in earth colours. IT IS ALSO A WAR SITE. IN 1944 THE ALLIES TOOK HOLLANDIA, AS JAYAPURA THEN WAS, and turned it into an enormous base - hundreds of thousands of troops - AND DOUGLAS MACARTHUR DIRECTED THE NEW GUINEA CAMPAIGN FROM IFAR GUNUNG ON THE HILL ABOVE THE LAKE, where the monument and his viewpoint still stand and the view is extraordinary. Jayapura itself is the Papuan capital, squeezed between steep hills and the sea, AND IS WHERE YOU CHANGE PLANES FOR THE BALIEM VALLEY, which is the only practical reason most travellers pass through at all. Give it a day rather than a connection; the lake at dawn is worth it.

Lake Sentani and Jayapura, Papua, Jayapura, Papua, Indonesia

JAYAPURA HAS FLIGHTS from Jakarta, Makassar and Manado, landing at SENTANI AIRPORT beside the lake - which is about forty minutes from the city itself. LAKE VILLAGES ARE REACHED BY BOAT, chartered at the lakeside at Asei or Ayapo and arranged on the day. THE MACARTHUR MONUMENT AT IFAR GUNUNG SITS INSIDE AN ACTIVE MILITARY AREA - you sign in at the gate, carry identification, and access can be refused. THE SENTANI LAKE FESTIVAL is usually held in JUNE. BARK PAINTINGS ARE BOUGHT DIRECTLY AT ASEI. PAPUA'S PERMIT AND SECURITY SITUATION CHANGES and a surat jalan has been required at times - check current advice rather than relying on older accounts. It is hot and humid; the lake is best early.

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