BY DAY TEN WE'RE NEARING SUWARI, the most remote mountain village we will encounter. Our 1:100,000 scale topographic map shows a dense jumble of contour lines and three large white patches that read OBSCURED BY CLOUD. The map was compiled by the Royal Australian Survey Corps more than three decades ago and has not been updated.

As we walk through fields of sweet potato, corn, and banana trees, a sentry spots us and blows on a conch horn to announce our arrival. Drums boom, rattles cackle, and in a small dirt opening a group of people begin to dance. The men are decorated in elaborate bird-of-paradise headdresses and necklaces of pigs' tusks, their bodies rubbed with black oil; they lunge at us with wooden spears, their tongues shooting serpentlike from their mouths. The women dance bare-breasted in woven grass skirts, shrieking as they swing axes over our heads. The soldiers never got to see such a display. In fact, American WWII maps list Suwari as deserted. When the villagers saw the soldiers coming, they fled to nearby caves.

One of the dancers approaches and introduces himself as Giblin. In broken English he explains that the village had learned that a group of taubada, or white men, was on its way, and they had organized the ceremony in our honor. At one time, he says, the dance was performed as a celebration after a successful raid. Having captured or killed their enemies, warriors would return to dance and to feast on human flesh. Smiling, he assures me that his people have no intention of eating us.

That night, crowded into the open-sided "house of wind," Giblin lights the village's only lamp, a sure sign that we are honored guests—kerosene is a four-day walk away. We are, he says, the first outsiders to visit Suwari since 1975, when Papua New Guinea gained its independence. Prior to '75, Australian colonial patrols used to make infrequent visits, imposing on the distant mountain villages a Western economic structure and the British system of law. The patrolmen occasionally doled out harsh justice, but they also brought medicine, tools, and contact with the outside world. Now the village is suffering—no school for the children, no employment opportunities, and a high incidence of malaria, tuberculosis, skin diseases, and infant mortality. Had Suwari been more accessible, Giblin's people might have sold their pristine forests to logging operations. Because of its location, though, Suwari is putting its hope in the Kapa Kapa Trail. Perhaps it will bring taubada with money.

After years of promotion, the Kokoda Trail, on which the Australians fought the Japanese, now draws 2,000 trekkers a year to Papua New Guinea. The World Wildlife Fund and the Kokoda Track Authority have joined forces to begin turning the trail into a model of sustainable ecotourism. Though there have been problems—erosion, siltation, the clearing of forests for firewood—and though the track authority worries about the loss of cultural identity among the people of the Kokoda, the trail has been a success. A new plan calls for the training of guides in expedition skills, English, history, environmental stewardship, and the promotion of native culture, architecture, and craftsmanship.

Giblin is not aware of any of this, yet he already has a plan for the Kapa Kapa. His village will build a guesthouse, the young men will make money as carriers, the women will sell fruits and vegetables, the villagers will take trekkers on birding expeditions, they will don traditional tribal costumes and dance and sing. The question is, will the taubada come?

Giblin tries to convince us to stay an extra day. It is mating season for the bird of paradise, and soon the gaudy males will be dancing on their forest perches, courting females. Although tempted by the chance to see one of the world's rarest birds, we press on.