WELCOME TO EAST-PAPUA, THE INDONESIA TOURISM : HISTORY. (www.baliem.com)

Papua Provice (Irian Jaya, former Dutch New Guinea) is a hot, humid island rising from the sea with some of the most impenetrable jungles in the world and yet also has snow caps covering 5,000meter - high mountain peaks, towering over glacier lakes.
Papua islands Indonesia's largest and easternmost province and covers the western half of the world's second largest island. It is a land of exceptional natural grandeur, with beautiful scenic beaches, immense stretches of marshlands, cool grassy meadows and powerful rivers carving gorges and tunnels through dark and dense primeval forests. The most heavily populated and cultivated parts of the island are the Paniai Lakes district and the Baliem Valley to the east.

The people of the island can be divided into more than 250 subgroup,which are closely related to the islands along the southern rim of the Pacific and include among others, the Marindanim, Yah'ray, Asmat, Mandobo, Dani and Afyat.
Those in the central highlands still maintain their customs and traditions and because of the terrain have virtually been untouched by outside influences. Communications hove always been difficult here and different tribes have lived, for the most part, in isolation even of each other, resulting in an incredibly diverse mixture of cultures.

The flatter coastal regions of Irian Jaya, however, were visited as early as the 7th century by traders from Sriwijaya. European traders began arriving in the early 16 th century, looking or spices and have left historical footprints in the area with names such as Bougainville, Cape d'Urville and the Torres Straits, named after Luis Baez de Torres, a Spanish navigator from the early 17th.It was the Dutch who made the most lasting impact on the island, who in 1828, formally made Irian a Dutch Territory which was not released until 1962.

The Provincial capital of Jayapura is built on hills which slope down to the sea and is accessible by boat and place. It was here that General MacArthur assembled his fleet for the invasion of the Philippines during the Second World War.Regular flights to other major parts of the archipelago are available with Garuda and Merpati Nusantara Airlines.

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