STRANGERS IN THE FOREST.(Papua)

The jungle canopy below us was suddenly ruptured by a rectangular clearing not much longer than a suburban lawn. This was the airstrip for Wanggemalo, a tiny village in the Indonesian province of Papua, which is the western half of New Guinea. The six-seat plane carrying our tour group, which had been chartered from Seventh-Day Adventist missionaries, began a rapid descent. At the end of the airstrip, a few dozen members of the Kombai tribe waited patiently for this rare arrival. They were half-dressed, in hand-me-down clothes, and their arms were filled with arrows carved from sugarcane and bundles of limp yellow flowers. Their hair was fluffed with chicken feathers, and their thin black legs were spattered with toffee-colored mud.

The wheels touched down on the crudely cut grass, and the plane came to a stop. Georg Decristoforo and Theresia Ellinger, a couple in their fifties from the Austrian Tyrol, climbed out first. They were followed by a young blond Finn named Juha. All were scientists. Georg and Theresia were chemical engineers with Sandoz, the pharmaceutical company; Juha worked for a small company outside Helsinki that designed software for the European Space Agency. They greeted the Kombai with awkward waves and smiles.

I emerged from the plane along with Kelly Woolford, our American tour guide. It was early morning; a low mist hovered over ancient ferns and tufts of flowering ginger. Starting at dawn the next day, Woolford was to lead us on a two-week trek deep into the surrounding rain forest. Woolford, who lives in Bali, runs Papua Adventures, a small company that specializes in treks through the wildest zones of Papua. Although he has a degree in criminology from Drury University, in Springfield, Missouri, he resembles an American backwoodsman of centuries past, with shoulder-length blond hair, a greyhound physique, and a rural Missouri accent. Woolford takes three or four small groups into the jungle each year. The trip, which costs several thousand dollars per person, is not for the timid: the forest terrain is punishing and remote, and there are few comforts or safeguards.

The goal of our expedition was to meet forest-dwelling Kombai who had never seen this airstrip--people who knew little or nothing of modern civilization. Many Kombai, Woolford had told us, do not live in villages. Single families build tree houses high in the forest canopy, with the aim of protecting themselves from potential enemies. There are dozens of such tree houses in the jungle; some of them had been visited by Westerners, Woolford said, and others had not. "We're going to find Kombai who may never have even heard of white people, let alone seen any," he told us. "You'll see that look in their eyes."

The fantasy of a "first contact" encounter has lured a steady trickle of Westerners to Papua, whose interior rain forests are nearly devoid of towns, roads, and other signs of modernity. Every year, a few dozen tourists visit this jungle region, either with Woolford or with a rival company such as Primitive Destinations International. The region has a reputation for being dangerous, and this keeps it from being besieged by travellers. "It's the last wild place left," Woolford likes to say. "The last untamed place." Brazil also has isolated native populations, he acknowledges, but the Amazon is rapidly being infiltrated by prospectors and farmers. Papua's interior feels cloistered by comparison.

Tourists who sign up for Woolford's expeditions are looking for something simultaneously subtle and extreme. They want a brief, nonintrusive encounter with fragile and isolated peoples, much the way ecotourists attempt to observe endangered jungle wildlife without disturbing the animals' delicate habitat. Such an adventure sounds voyeuristic, but Woolford had promised that we would not feel like gawkers. "We're not going to be leering at the Kombai from behind a glass window," he said. "We'll be their guests."

We put on our backpacks and began climbing a nearby hill. It was a hundred degrees in the shade, and our feet kept sinking into the muddy forest floor. Pandanus trees loomed over us like towering ruins. Several Kombai followed without pestering us, silently showing off their wares. Their elegant arrows were barbed like Gothic spires and whitened at the tips. They did not sweat in the heat, though butterflies and sweatflies swirled around their heads.