To date, Daniel Pinto, a 27-year-old man from south London’s Lambeth, is on his way to be the world’s first tourist to visit various remote tribes in Papua New Guinea. Pinto aims to explore all 195 countries, having already visited 138 of them. His trip to Papua New Guinea last month marked one of the significant milestones for his adventure. He spent three weeks immersing himself in the lives of indigenous tribes and witnessed firsthand the skeleton tribe, the crocodile people, and the spirit birds.
He would research the tribes before coming here, contact locals, and they would guide him to very remote areas. So during his stay here, he would be living with 10 different tribes. He was invited to several ceremonies, witnessed a wedding, hunted, and even stayed in some local homes and guesthouses. Pinto says, “It still has villages and tribes that people have not visited yet.”. I found it incredible that in 2024 I was the first tourist that some tribes have ever seen.”
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Dubbed a ‘danger tourist,’ Pinto has previously visited countries like Libya, Iraq, and Syria, in search of places considered dangerous or lesser-explored. He described Papua New Guinea as raw and remote, noting the safety challenges he faced, including road hijacking risks that forced him to travel by boat for five hours.
These were some of his tribal experiences that included seeing a protection ritual of a sacred waterfall by the spirit bird tribe, a birth celebration with clay-covered and orange-painted people, and the crocodile people’s habit of creating scars that look like crocodile skin as a way of initiation. His favorite was attending an unscheduled tribal wedding, which he described as “a beautiful thing to be part of.”
The UK Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office advises against travel to parts of Papua New Guinea unless really necessary. The journey is thus risky for Pinto. he posts his travels across the globe on his Instagram (@dnzh.travels).
