Upon arrival at the Ambon airport cars are waiting to take you to the Ombak Putih at her mooring in the harbor. After you have settled in on the vessel, had a safety briefing and freshened up, explore a bit of this bustling capital city of the Moluccas. Ambon was built on a hillside overlooking the bay and there are many interesting sites of historical and cultural interest. Among them are the remnants of several old forts built by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) during the heyday of the spice trade. If there is time, see the truly beautiful Commonwealth War Cemetery, the resting place of Australian, New Zealand, and British forces who fell during World War II. Once you rejoin the boat, in the early afternoon make the crossing to the Banda archipelago.

Today reach the renowned, remote Banda archipelago. Famous for natural beauty and cultural heritage, and their well-preserved remnants of an extraordinary history of imperialist rivalry, these islands are quite simply one of Indonesia’s highlights. Banda was originally the world’s only source of nutmeg and mace, valued for their rarity and high cost by aristocrats and elites. Today Banda’s quiet and charming ambiance belies a dramatic and often tragic history, including war, massacre, earthquake, and eruption. This is a very special destination. Since conditions of wind and tide determine the order in which you visit various Banda islands, your activities here can’t be assigned to a particular day. In the capital Bandaneira, on the biggest island, Neira, land near the elegant arches of Hotel Maulana – a little slice of Somerset Maugham. It’s a pleasant stroll through the quaint colonial outpost’s characterful streets, inspecting notable residences, a museum, churches and a waterfront market. Brooding over all is the medieval-looking Fort Belgica, its five crumbling bastions now solidly rebuilt. The population is a handsome mix of Malay, Arab, Dutch and Melanesian. Just across the harbor is Banda’s perfect, jungle-clad volcanic cone Gunung Api (‘Fire Mountain’ – 640 meters). The fit and ambitious might make an early morning ascent up a challenging track to the top for stunning views. Or snorkel over the black lava stream of its last eruption.

Choose from some of the other small islands of the Banda archipelago – Lonthoir, Ai, Run, Hatta – each of them with its own remnants of old plantations, Dutch cemeteries, and fortifications. The tiny outlying island of Run was the subject of an unbelievable real estate deal when in 1667, under the Treaty of Breda, it was ceded by the English to the Dutch in exchange for Manhattan. Yes, the Manhattan where New York stands. On the island of Ai you can visit Fort Revenge, built by the English before being captured by the Dutch. On Lonthoir you can enjoy the tranquil beauty of nutmeg groves, where the shapely fruit-bearing trees grow in the shelter of towering, gigantic kenari or native almond trees. You can observe the age-old technique of harvesting by hand, and can taste (and buy) baked goods, condiments and jams flavored with fresh mace, nutmeg, or their fruit casing. Climb up to fortress Hollandia and go on to meet the last of the ‘perkeniers’ – the small-holder farmers who managed the plantations for the Dutch, on land parcels known as ‘perken’. Learn of more recent wars and eruptions that shook these lovely islands, and value even more their current peace and tranquility. Leaving Banda navigate through the Sonnegat (‘Sun’s gap’) between Neira and Gunung Api, possibly escorted by kora-kora – the big Moluccan galleys used traditionally for ceremony and warfare, propelled by banks of warrior-oarsmen.

On Saparua land beside Dutch Fort Duurstede (1691), stormed in 1817 in a revolt led by Ambonese Kapitan Pattimura, a national hero and martyr. His story is told by vivid museum dioramas. Brightly painted bemo mini-buses take you to a morning market before you sail to nearby Nusalaut. Rarely visited by outsiders, this island is home to a Christian community after early missionaries planted their faith here at the same time that Islam was spreading through the archipelago. Visit the Eben-Haezer church founded in 1719. Nearby is the restored Dutch Fort Beverwyck, built from 1657 in a distinctive architectural style not yet encountered. A highlight here is a lunchtime feast of wonderful local dishes – freshly prepared by villager hosts from forest, garden and sea produce. It’s your once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to try papeda, the most famous and unusual of the many sago dishes. 

Manipa Island is said to have magical powers, because none of the Portuguese, Dutch or WWII Japanese who occupied the surrounding islands ever landed here. The spell doesn’t apply to Indonesian ships, so land at Uwe township for lessons in village technology. Its gardens produce cashews, while the leaves of forest Melaleuca cajuputi are pot-distilled to make a volatile oil called kayu putihor cajeput. It’s famed throughout Indonesia as a universal panacea: cosmetic, antiseptic, insecticide, decongestant, analgesic, expectorant, anti-spasmodic, stimulant and tonic! Also view production of the traditional Moluccan food staple, sago, a nutritious flour washed from the fibrous trunk of the cycad-like sago palm. Sago can be baked into easily transportable cakes, while the palm also provides building timber and thatch. After an afternoon snorkeling, cruise on towards Belang-Belang.

Deserted, white-sand Belang-Belang is a real beachcomber’s paradise, where you can launch a full flotilla of watercraft, kayaks and paddle boards. At Obi Latu, mountains clad in forest and clove plantations plunge spectacularly into the sea. Visit isolated Manatahan, a village of migrant Butungese from Sulawesi hundreds of miles to the west. Migration is not unusual in this island world where people are accustomed to moving by boat, and islands are sparsely populated or uninhabited. In past times the picturesque channels around Obi were dotted with the sails of local spice traders, Portuguese caravels, Spanish galleons, Dutch jachts and English pinnaces. Now encounter friendly fishers and their outrigger dugouts, colorful timber island-trading craft, and sometimes little lambo sloops still trading under sail.

By today you likely have lost track of time and place, but your crew won’t have. They have delivered you on schedule to the Patinti Strait and Doworalamo, where you visit a village of the famous sea gypsies, known in Eastern Indonesia as Sama-Bajo. Scattered widely through Southeast Asia, sea gypsies spent their entire lives from birth to death on their small sailboats called lipa-lipa. Now the modern world has pushed them ashore. Landless, their homes are always built on stilts over coral reefs or the tidal margins of remote islands such as this one. Also have opportunities for swimming, snorkeling and beach-combing before our ship continues on its northerly course.

Wake up off the north shore of Bacan, another seat of Indonesia’s historic spice sultanates. Explorr ashore at the isolated village of Geti or its neighbor Goro-Goro, walking up a rainforest-clad river valley. Bacan is where Alfred Russel Wallace discovered the golden birdwing butterfly and the giant mason bee, Chalicodoma pluto. Keep a close watch for these and a host of species, some of them endemic, including parrots, cockatoos, lorikeets, hornbills, the elusive cuscus or a rare black macaque – the only monkey in Maluku. It’s the wrong side of the Wallace Line for monkeys; these ones were introduced from North Sulawesi.

Sunrise finds you in Indonesia’s most stunning seascape. Four perfect, brilliant-green volcanic-cone islands emerge from the sea in a straight line stretching south to north, parallel to the rugged, forested spine of the big island called Halmahera. They are Makian, Moti, Tidore and Ternate. Makian is dominated by volcanic Mount Kiebesi (1357 meters) towering over its palm-fringed, white-sand beaches and crystal-clear waters. There are interesting expeditions ashore and good places to snorkel, and natural hot springs. Later cruise towards Payahe Bay on the mainland of Halmahera, which was another of the Spice Sultanates, formerly called Gilolo. Landfall is a remote beach full of outrigger fishing craft, for an easy afternoon trek towards a forest waterfall.

Today you are in Tidore, another perfect volcanic-cone island rising from the tropical seas. Kiematabu (1730 meters) is extinct, but its slopes feature plantations of the graceful clove trees that were once found only upon this and a few adjacent islands. On your way around this scenic island of gaily painted village houses and tropical blooms, visit a blacksmith working an ancient design of piston-bellows to forge knives and machetes. Reach the old town of Soa Siu, where local vehicles bring you high on the slope of the volcano to visit some age-old clove plantations. Picturesque port Soa Siu is dominated by two strongholds: the Portuguese Fort Torre built in the 1570s, and Fort Tahula, established by the Spanish in 1610 to menace their Dutch rivals across the strait. They overlook the modern palace of the Sultan of Tidore, a one-time rival to Ternate’s sultan. A seashore monument marks the 1521 visit of Magellan’s battered fleet on the first circumnavigation of the world.

Reach the island of Ternate and your final destination. This colorful city has been the center of the spice trade for several centuries, where the imprint of the Dutch and the Portuguese can still be seen. In fact, its warehouses are still filled with fragrant piles of clove and nutmeg. Visit what is believed to have been the house where the great English naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace stayed in 1858, when he penned his famous ‘Letter From Ternate’ to Charles Darwin on the theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. Nearby is the splendid 17th-century, pagoda-style royal mosque, and the Sultan’s Palace with its rich collection of heirlooms. There’s a choice of forts to visit, introducing the turbulent colonial era, such as well-restored Fort Tolukko (Portuguese, 1540). After that go back to the Ombak Putih to say goodbye to your expert guide, the captain, and the crew, and be transferred to the airport and your flight to Jakarta or Bali.