Mount Hagen Festival & West New Britain

Customer Reviews

• 

  Sile

  · August 30th, 2024
  I cannot recommend any tours to PNG by Crooked Compass. They outsource their tours to a local provider who fails to deliver on many of the services claimed. This company operates under many names depending on where they are in PNG - PNG Footprint Tours, Bougainville Horizion (sic) Tours, all run by the Kawage family (Lucas and Serah) and their offspring and buddies. They likely have other supposed companies too. From the first day it became clear that there would be problems. We were told our hotel was "upgraded" but in reality it was downgraded to accommodate the many other tours that our so-called guide, Daniel, was running simultaneously. The room was freezing, cockroaches and no lunch provided despite listed in the itinerary. When we asked if we could have anything we were simply told "no" and that we'd have to wait for dinner at 7:30pm. There was no opportunity to buy anything as the location was very isolated. At no point did we actually have a guide doing any guiding. Frequently, excuses were given when they'd drop us somewhere and only reappear hours after the fixed time slot. Or we'd be put into a van to stay on time, then they'd park us at the side of the road for a couple of hours while they'd disappear. At one point our so-called guide deposited us at the mudman village and reappared two days later, albeit very late, to transfer us to the airport. He was so late, we were just making our own way down to the road to try to catch a local bus to the airport. We were made feel foolish for often enquiring about the meals we were supposed to have. One day we were made babysit for the full day for two small children. The final straw was when we were supposed to have 3 nights on the Kombe islands. It became very clear at this point that the local operators never thought we'd stick with the tour this long and nothing was arranged and they began to ignore my whatsapp messages. Crooked Compas also was very slow at answering my more-and-more desperate emails, usually believing the local providers and indicating that my expectations were too high. Yes, I did expect a room to sleep in each night, transfers as paid for, and meals each day as advertised in the itinerary. It's purely by chance that on arrival at Hoskins airport I asked around and found the shuttle service for the hotel we were to stay in at Kimbe before heading out to Kombe. The next day when we finally (heading towards sunset at this stage) got in a boat to the islands, the guide had no idea where we were going and kept asking why I insisted on going there... it was part of the 10-day itinerary I'd booked with Crooked Compass. When we finally got to an island, we were not allowed off the boat and the islanders didn't want us there. They told us that the island was too full (it was extremely crowded) and it wouldn't be safe for us to get off the boat. A village elder got into our boat and said he'd find somwhere for us - so we headed to the next island where they then accosted the school headmaster and told him we were "volunteers" who'd come to work in the school (!!!!). The headmaster was put on the spot, but agreed to let us sleep on the floor of the school as it was too dark for us to return to the mainland at this stage. Again, we'd had no food all day. He also said we could not stay there for 3 nights and we needed security with us. This even meant that I (female) needed male security with me if I needed to go to the loo. At this point we decided to quit the tour as it was clear there was no real tour organised for us. Sleeping on bare wooden floor boards in an open (with roof) classroom with 5 men around us for security did not seem like a good way to spend the next few days. And once class started the next morning we were again homeless. The headmaster agreed to bring us back to the mainland (we'd to hand lots of money over) then we'd to get a shared transport back to Kimbe (more money handed over as the "guides/escorts/their family members" insisted we'd to pay for them all too). It was only at this point I finally managed to get hold of Crooked Compass - local company they'd outsourced to run the tour still ignorning us - and they assured us that they'd cover the remaining nights for us in the hotel and our meals, plus get us our money back. We took them at their word, but of course they local company is still trying to fight this. The hotel we stayed in on quitting the tour is left with an unpaid bill and I hope Crooked Compass will resolve this. We were not met on return to Port Moreseby for the extra costs we'd to pay for to be refunded to us, but Crooked Compass again stepped in and managed to get the Kawages to at least return that money to us. However, we had paid for a trip in PNG and this was not what we had. We had a few good moments, with constant issues and excuses by the Kawages (and believed by Crooked Compass) why we couldn't have food, why we couldn't do things on the itinerary, why no accommodation was booked and why there was never any electricity or generator to power our phones so that we couldn't even contact anyone to try to get out of the bad and dangerous situations we were put into. If you search PNG Footprint Tours under "mentions" on Facebook, you'll see that several people have had similar bad experiences. While on the island with no facilities I badly injured myself in the semi-darkness by falling through a missing floorboard in the stilt school classroom. Thankfully, this did not need medical attention as I am able to treat it myself, but I dread to think how badly this could all have gone. I cannot recommed Crooked Compass on the basis of the experience we had in PNG. They did not do due diligence with the company they outsourced to, failed to believe us initially and were trying to insist that the delays/changes to itinerary were our fault. We'd no guides, no food, no accommodation, and it was unsafe. I really wonder what we actually paid for.
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  Trip date: July 2024