Day of Rest at the Beach!
Everybody needs a day of rest every once and a while, even hard working missionary trainees! We had the great privilege of enjoying the Kerema beach on two of our days off during our six week stay. We also used the beach as a short cut from the High School to the Primary School one day when I had my camera with me. When we left the High School one of the staff said they were taking us to the $1,000,000 view of the beach. They were right and here it is pictured above. I shared this photo with the community later on and they loved it. How could you not? It makes Kerema, Papua New Guinea look like a tropical paradise! And it is. 
In addition to having beautiful black sand and warm, inviting water, the beach also features these amazing caves. Just don't go into them before high tide or you will be swimming under water and against the tide to get out! We explored a few of these without flashlights and it doesn't take long to get deep into darkness. It's places like this that contribute to PNG's sense of danger. 
We had great fun playing on the beach with Pastor Dixon's children featured here in one of my favorite PNG shots. There was a thin coat of water on the sand making this reflection of the active sand castle builders. Notice the black sand, which I believe may be a form of volcanic sand.
A photogenic bunch, aren't they? This is another of my favorite PNG shots. The Papuan lifestlye is pretty laid back generally speaking and people can visit the beach pretty much whenever they feel like it as along as they aren't working. On Sunday afternoons it seems the whole town can be found on the beach playing soccer or volleyball, but the rest of the week it's virtually desolate except for a few children skipping school! 
Here's a view from inside one of the caves with an opening of sunlight above and a view out the tunnel to the waterfront. This one was great fun to walk through, but definitely not at high tide! 
Papuan's use these boats to go fishing. I never did go out on one but I hear it's quite an adventure. I'm sorry now that we didn't get to the beach more often. It was a long hot 20 to 30 minute walk from where we were staying, but always proved to be worth it when we got there. Interestingly, you have to cross the airport tarmac to get to it, which the locals do without fear because they know the plane schedule. Us foreigners on the other hand always looked both ways and up into the sky before we crossed over to the beach side and back.
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