The Scents of the Spice Islands

After breakfast, tour leaders collect you from your hotel and take you directly to the boat anchored in Ambon Harbor. Once you settle in and the captain receives clearance, you depart south across the open sea to the Banda Archipelago. You arrive at these islands known for their natural beauty, cultural heritage, and history as the world's only original source of nutmeg and mace. Here, you view well-preserved remnants of the region's imperialist rivalry.

Wind and tide conditions determine the exact order of your visits to the various Banda islands. In the capital of Banda Neira, you explore the streets, a museum, churches, a waterfront market, and forts. Just across the harbor, you view Gunung Api, a 640-meter volcanic cone. You also visit the smaller islands of Lonthor, Ai, Run, and Hatta to see remnants of old plantations, Dutch cemeteries, and fortifications. On the outlying island of Run, you learn about the 1667 Treaty of Breda, where the English ceded the island to the Dutch in exchange for Manhattan.

Observe the age-old technique of harvesting nutmeg by hand, and taste (and buy) baked goods, condiments, and jams flavored with fresh mace and nutmeg. The fruit enclosing the nutmeg seed is sold dried and has a unique and intense flavor. It is a delicacy rarely obtainable outside the Banda Islands. There are some excellent coral reefs here, and you should see some amazing marine life while snorkeling. Ironically, in the less-than-pristine waters of the harbor, you have a good chance of seeing (at dusk) arguably the world's most stunning fish, the small but jewel-like Mandarin Fish. Leaving Banda, you will 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.

Visit Nusa Laut, home to a Christian community, where you will visit a Dutch-built church from 1719 as well as a 17th century fort. A highlight here is a lunchtime feast of wonderful local dishes – freshly prepared by villager hosts from forest, garden and sea produce. Manipa Island is said to have magical powers, because none of the Portuguese, Dutch or WW II-Japanese who occupied the surrounding islands ever landed here. Here they distill a volatile oil called kayu putih, a volatile oil famed throughout Indonesia as a universal panacea: cosmetic, antiseptic, insecticide, decongestant, analgesic, expectorant, anti- spasmodic, stimulant and tonic. You also view production of the traditional Moluccan food staple, sago, a nutritious flour washed from the fibrous trunk of the sago palm. Sago can be baked into easily transportable dry cakes, which Wallace often subsisted on, while the palm also provides building material and thatch. After an afternoon snorkeling, you will cruise on towards your next destination.

You will spend the next couple of days visiting some beautiful paradise islands, including the deserted, white-sand Belang-Belang, a real beachcomber’s paradise, where you can launch your full flotilla of watercraft, kayaks, and paddle boards. On Obi, mountains clad in forest and clove plantations plunge spectacularly into the sea, and you will visit the isolated village of Manatahan, a village of migrants from Sulawesi, hundreds of miles to the west. 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 you encounter friendly fishers and their outrigger dugouts, colorful timber island- trading craft and sometimes little sloops still trading under sail. You go ashore into the forests of Bacan Island, in search of some endemic wildlife including the Standardwing Bird of Paradise, and the huge and magnificent Golden Birdwing Butterfly, as well as parrots, cockatoos, lorikeets, hornbills, the elusive cuscus and maybe the endangered, black-crested macaque – the only monkey in Maluku.

Spend the day at the Guarici Archipelago, a chain of islands with white sandy beaches, vibrant coral reefs, and some lovely local villages. You will snorkel, swim, and pay a visit to one of the villages to meet the local people. The islands are part of a government-controlled conservation area, designed to protect the reefs and the many beautiful marine species that live there. Visit the small village of Dodinga on Halmahera, the very place where Alfred Russel Wallace was staying when, in a fit of malarial delirium, he came up with the idea for the mechanism for evolutionary theory. Dodinga is a pretty little riverside village with friendly people, colorful houses, and the ruins of an old Portuguese fort, and its importance in the history of science cannot be understated.

Today, you find yourself in Ternate, once the center of the spice trade for several centuries. The influence of the Dutch and the Portuguese can still be seen, and their warehouses are still filled with fragrant piles of clove and nutmeg. You will have a short tour of the city, which includes a visit to the Sultan’s Palace, with its rich collection of heirlooms, and the well-restored Fort Tolukko, built by the Portuguese in 15401540). It will head back to the Ombak Putih for lunch and to say farewell to the captain and the crew before heading off to the airport for the next leg of your journey.