PNG's national slogan is the "Land of the Unexpected."  What drove that home for you?
I'm usually a strict vegetarian, but when you go to a place like PNG, it's tough not to accept what the cultures give you. These people live completely off the land. They grow all their food in gardens and raise a few pigs. I've got no problem eating a pig they raised, but that's about as exotic of a meat as I'm willing to try.

Andy Maser and I were on our way into a cave with a group of local guides to help find a new species of frog, when we noticed all of the kids were chopping down saplings and stripping their leaves. When we got into the cave, the kids ran through this two-foot (.5-meter) deep mixture of water and guano swinging their saplings at the thousands of bats swarming from the cave.

Then the kids built fires, pulled the bat's wings apart and singed the hair off their bellies. They ate them whole. Nothing could have prepared me for eight-year-olds eating raw bats. But if I had no other source of protein, I'd reevaluate my diet as well.

And the most useful equipment?
First-aid kits and Clif Bars. Jungles mean bacteria and fungi and traveling in PNG means bad food. Basically, we were always wet, nothing ever healed, and every little cut and scratch turned into a jungle ulcer or a constantly pussing infection. At night, we'd do everything we could to dry our feet out. Eventually the fungus on our feet grew into this foot rot that was so painful we had a few "20-step days," as we called them. So having stocked first-aid kits was key.

Then there's the diet. The generosity of the subsistence farmers of the Nakanai Mountains is unmatched. Travelers are always housed and well fed but after a few weeks of root vegetables you stop wondering why they give so much food away. Plus, there is almost no protein in the bush so Clif Bars helped keep us healthy … and sane.

What's next?
I've got a really great team of people I'm working with to hopefully build on our success in PNG by running two more expeditions in 2008 to similarly threatened and endangered biodiversity hot spots. First, it's a kayaking trip to China. We'll be kayaking the last unexplored section of whitewater draining the Tibetan Plateau. Then we'll team up with scientists and environmentalist downstream to talk about the value of free-flowing rivers in China. Our goal there, like in PNG, is to raise awareness to the impact that our lifestyles have on other cultures and environments. We hope that celebrating these places through exploration and adventure will help motivate westerners to reduce our footprint wherever possible.