Deidei Hot Springs:
An Undiscovered Geothermal Masterpiece
With an artist’s palette of colours, pools of bubbling mud, and myriad mineral-encrusted steam vents, Deidei hot springs is a geothermal masterpiece you’ll likely have all to yourself, as Chris Shorrock discovered.
Getting to Deidei Hot Springs
Located on Papua New Guinea’s (PNG’s) Fergusson Island, Deidei hot springs are an easy 30-minute walk from Deidei Guesthouse past steaming sulphurous streams and tropical swamps.
Fergusson Island itself is a two to three-hour dinghy ride from East Cape on the PNG mainland.
Lavender let us try her geothermally-cooked greens
Undiscovered and undeveloped
There are no guardrails or manicured walkways at Deidei, so it’s best to go with a guide. Smith, from Deidei Guesthouse, showed us the way and helped us avoid falling into boiling mud pools or stepping in steam vents.
One of the great things about Deidei is that you can be right in amongst the geothermal action, walking between the geysers, over multi-hued mineral deposits in red, yellow, black and white, and right alongside the crystal-clear blue pools. Just don’t jump in unless your guide says it’s safe; there are stories of people from other islands being boiled alive when they jumped in for a swim.
Cooking dinner at Deidei Hot Springs
Geothermal pools at Deidei Hot Springs
Thankfully not all the pools here are hot enough to cook your insides. Smith took us to a lovely spot for an evening soak, with aqua-blue water, easy lounging and a hot river where a dip was oddly refreshing given the heat.
It’s best to go in the early morning or late afternoon. The last thing we wanted to do in the midday heat was to jump into a hot pool!
Rico soaking in one of the hot pools at Deidei Hot Springs
Cooking with geothermal
The hot springs at Deidei are intricately woven into the fabric of daily life, and locals often stop on their way home from forest gardens to wash, do laundry, or get dinner started. On both our visits to the springs, we met locals cooking greens in the hot pools, families there for an evening wash, and women carrying their laundry back to the village.
Traditional cooking techniques are still in use at Deidei Hot Springs
Smith also brought some food for us to try. So while we soaked in the blue pool, our bananas, coconuts and taro gently boiled away in one of the hotter pools. We sampled the fruits of our lazy cooking as we ambled back to the village in the descending dusk, snacking on freshly cooked bananas and geothermally heated coconut juice.
Undiscovered masterpiece
Seemingly unchanged in centuries, Deidei is a masterpiece of colour and bubbling-steaming-gurgling action, ensconced in the rainforest of a remote tropical island.
You can walk freely between geysers and steaming vents, kick back in a mineral-infused hot pool, and get to know the locals, cooking, washing, or just stopping by for a chin-wag on their way home from the garden. All while your dinner slowly cooks in a geothermal pool nearby.
We were the only tourists on our visit to Deidei Hot Springs
As a destination, it doesn’t get much more obscure than this.