Nonetheless, the contrast with chilly, congested and completely tamed Connecticut was profound. New Guinea was a steamy, fecund world where physical geography still dominated, where people were more alive. You could see it in their body language and open expressions, their take-it-or-leave it approach to structured time. Mia knew her attraction to this place was partly a grass-is-greener paean to Rousseau’s noble savage, that desire to get back to nature, which so many burned-out Westerners pined for at some point in their holidays. But reality here was often brutal and cruel. At least as a doctor, she had a valid reason to stay.

The van slowed suddenly for a crude roadblock comprised of a single palm trunk and two rusty oil drums. It was manned by a handful of men in rough patched uniforms. Parked on the verge was their battered-looking truck.

It seemed an odd place for a checkpoint.

‘Soldia?’ Mia asked.

Mandy pulled her son in tightly.

‘Nogut soldia.’

A grim-looking man with a thick beard and a shell necklace approached the driver’s window.

‘Halo, bos.’ The old driver nodded obsequiously.

Mia slipped down in her seat as the bearded man scanned them with ganja-clouded eyes. His wide flat nose and flared nostrils enhanced his aggressive appearance.

‘Westap bilong yu taksi pemit?’ he demanded.

The driver handed over his taxi licence and the bearded man made a show of examining it.

‘Pemit nogut,’ he announced. ‘Olgeta offim. Dispela oda.’

Nobody on the van made a move to comply. The driver protested his licence was current and offered ten kina, then twenty, and finally thirty. The bearded man flatly rejected this, and his men muttered as their knuckles grew white on machete handles. Mia hastily tapped Mandy on the shoulder and passed her two fifty-kina notes.

‘Plis givim draiva.’

Mandy leaned forward to slip it to the driver, who quickly thrust it through the window. Clearly this was the kind of bribe the men were after, but with their blood up, would they accept it? Tense seconds passed before the leader shrugged and waved at his men.

‘Orait. Koan, hariap!’

All smiles, the men lifted the barrier and let them proceed. Everyone began to chat again inside the van.

It was a reminder of how quickly moods changed here.

At Vanimo, Mia went straight to the airport and bought a ticket for the furthest destination possible up the Sepik that week – the small village of Timbunke, some 300 kilometres distant. It wasn’t anywhere near the border, but she knew small tourist cruise ships called in, and there were always fishermen with motorised canoes.