After 23 hours of flights through three countries, a 90-minute van ride on a winding dirt road, and a 20-minute boat ride across a sparkling ocean, I landed in the Milne Bay region in southeastern Papua New Guinea (PNG). There is nothing fun about 25 hours of travel time, but the sheer natural beauty of the island made it all worthwhile. PNG constitutes half of the second largest island in the world. The other half is occupied by Indonesia. It is located in the Oceania region of the Pacific, several hundred miles north of Australia.

Until 1975, PNG was under control of the Australian government. In 1975 the country gained its independence, but it still relies fairly heavily on Australia for monetary support. During our long van ride from the airport to the resort, our driver explained that the reason so much of the road remained unpaved was that funding from Australia had been cut.

The main focus of my trip was scuba diving. There are very few places in the world that rival PNG for diving quality. An almost endless number of coral reefs are available to explore and see tropical fish, sea turtles, rays and several different species of sharks.

Many of the world’s formerly great dive sites have been marred by over-commercialization. The heavy boat traffic and huge numbers of divers seriously damages the reefs, which in turn damages the marine life.

PNG is remote and has not been largely commercialized. In two weeks of daily diving, we only saw one other dive boat. On any given dive we would see thousands of fish, and several sharks and turtles. Diving conditions like that are extremely rare in popular dive destinations like Australia and the Caribbean.

There are an equal number of fascinating things to do on land as there are below water. Exploring local villages was like stepping back in time several centuries: there is no power or running water, and people live in huts built from grass and wood.

The villages we saw were small, with populations ranging from five people to over 20. People live off subsistence farming and fishing. They grow yams, mangos and pineapple, and fish out of dugout canoes.

One of the highlights of the trip was hiking to two skull caves in the mountains. Years ago, before Christian missionaries arrived, villages would display the skulls of enemies they killed in battle to intimidate outsiders.

When the missionaries arrived, the villagers were told that they couldn’t keep the skulls. Rather than throw them away, the villagers hid the skulls in insubstantial-looking caves.

We hiked to two different skull caves. The first cave had 50 to 100 human skulls piled up on the floor; the second had close to 200. I had never seen human remains before.

Overall, it was refreshing to see a culture that has not been completely perverted by the Western world. The people don’t rely on television or electricity; they rely on their own abilities to work the land and fish. I was privileged to experience a completely unfamiliar way of life before Western culture becomes World culture.