Gateway to Papua — Sentani Lake, Humboldt Bay, and the world's last frontier
Jayapura is the capital of Papua Province — the Indonesian half of New Guinea and home to the world's third largest rainforest after the Amazon and Congo Basin. The city sits on Humboldt Bay beneath jungled mountains, overlooking Lake Sentani with its stilted Sentani villages and bark-cloth paintings. Papua is home to over 300 distinct tribes, 270+ languages, and the Baliem Valley where Dani warriors in traditional dress still practise centuries-old customs.
Jayapura was founded as Hollandia by the Dutch in 1910 as the administrative capital of Dutch New Guinea. In April 1944 General Douglas MacArthur chose Hollandia for a massive amphibious landing — bypassing Japanese strongholds along New Guinea's coast — and set up his Pacific HQ here. Indonesia incorporated Dutch New Guinea as Irian Jaya in 1963 after the New York Agreement; the city was renamed Jayapura (Sanskrit for 'City of Victory') in 1968. The region's territorial status remains contested by the independence movement OPM.