If you travel another way — improvising, wandering, hunting for the neighbourhood bar — this destination will frustrate you. If you come for something specific and organise it well, it gives a great deal back.
01 A national park half an hour away
Varirata National Park lies some twenty-three kilometres north-east of the city, on the Sogeri plateau, and takes around an hour and a half to reach. Climbing up you cross a climate border: below, dry savanna; above, closed tropical forest.
There are six marked trails running from three quarters of an hour to about three hours, plus lookouts over the valley. Some 231 bird species have been recorded, and it is probably the easiest place in the whole country to see a bird of paradise: the Raggiana, the national bird, turns up regularly.
You need your own or a hired vehicle; there is no useful public transport. Bring cash, water, food, repellent and sun protection, and ask for a local guide at the entrance: it multiplies what you will see and settles the practical side.
02 Birds you will not see in another country
New Guinea is the world centre of the birds of paradise, and none of them lives outside the region. At Varirata, along with the Raggiana, you get yellow-billed kingfishers, rainbow bee-eaters, fruit doves and rufous-bellied kookaburras.
There are also species you do not see but do find: megapodes do not incubate their eggs with their bodies but pile up a mound of leaf litter two metres across and let the heat of fermentation do the work. The mounds sit in plain view along the trails.
And in the city, at the nature park, you can see Victoria crowned pigeons close up — the largest pigeons in the world, nearly the size of a turkey, with that crest of white-tipped feathers.
03 The museum, in Waigani
The National Museum and Art Gallery is in Waigani, the administrative district raised after independence. It holds the country's best collection of Melanesian material culture: masks, carvings, pottery and the trading vessels of this coast.
See it on the first day, not the last. It explains the rest of the trip: why clay pots worked as currency, how people sailed with matting sails, and what the designs mean that you will later recognise on modern buildings.
With the museum and the national park you have the skeleton of a short stay. The rest of the city — Koki market, the Ela Beach promenade, the views from the hills — is seen by car and with company.
04 The practical part, which weighs more here
Book a hotel with an airport transfer and arrange transport for each outing before you arrive. The city is very spread out and you do not walk between districts; movement is by car, and it is worth having someone along who knows the ground.
The currency is the kina and you need cash for entry fees and markets. The dry season, June to October, is also the best for the trails: wet-season mud makes the climbs considerably harder.
And keep in mind what you already know about the country: no road links Port Moresby to the rest of it. If you are going on to the Highlands, to Madang or to the islands, that is a flight, and worth booking with slack.
05 How to build two days
Day one: the national museum in the morning, an unhurried lunch and, in the afternoon, the city's nature park to see up close the species you will later try to find in the forest. Views from the hills at dusk.
Day two: leave for Varirata before dawn, which is when the birds call and show themselves. Two trails in the morning, a packed lunch at a lookout and back in the mid-afternoon.
With one more night, repeat Varirata — a second dawn changes the species list completely — or give the day to the coast and the market. And if this is only the gateway to the rest of the country, let it be: for many travellers Port Moresby is exactly that, and it plays the part well.
