prepare
The most important thing for a prospective Kokoda trekker to think about is footwear. Get good shoes and really good socks are a must. Without those you will get terrible blisters on your feet and might get junglerot, which will put you in crutches for a long while and might cost you your feet. Every morning you should rub your feet with petroleum jelly and every night with talcum powder to keep them in shape for the walk.
The second thing is the importance of a decent water purifying system; iodine pills work great but they taste awful so think about complementing that with water purification tablets to take away the taste. Sometimes it might be far between the streams to refill your bottles so be sure to carry a few or one of those snazzy camel packs. A flashlight or even better, a headlamp is almost a must as it gets very dark in the jungle at night. It's also important to bring warmer clothes to wear at camp since the weather up in the mountains is quite cold at night and sometimes even during the day.
Before walking the Kokoda it is also important to carefully assess how fit you are. There are incidents of people dying of heart attacks most recently the summer of 2006 from over-exertion. There are several speeds at which one can walk the Kokoda, taking from a leisurely 10 days to a gruesome 16 hours, 34 minutes and 5 seconds, the world record held by local porter Brendan Buka. Basically the most important thing is that you have fun doing it. Going too fast isn't fun, but taking it too slow can be boring also if you have to wait for the others all the time.
