East Indies on a Spice Island Exploration

After settling aboard the Katharina, you visit the village of Watublapi, where local residents welcome you with traditional singing and dancing. You learn about the village's textile-making traditions, including spinning, dyeing, and weaving using traditional techniques. You also have time to view and purchase locally made textiles, try betel nut, and sample locally produced liquor if you wish.

Visit a local village that was abandoned, then snorkel in the surrounding waters. End your day by watching the sunset over Ile Ape, an active volcano.

Go ashore and meet the villagers of Umapura, a village famed for its weaving and dyeing, where you can see how the local women create their intricate ikat cloth. There is every chance to purchase some as a memento. Board some local boats to visit with Mawar, a friendly but wild dugong who lives in the seagrass beds of the nearby bay. You will also get to meet the “local hero”, Pak One, who ensures that Mawar is well protected. Visit the traditional village of Takpala up in the hills of Alor, where you will be welcomed by the chief and be witness to a ceremonial war dance in honor of your visit. You will see their traditional ‘Moko’ war drums and intricately designed ‘Ikat’ fabrics, which have been woven and dyed using age-old techniques, and used in local bridal dowries for centuries.

You do a bit of island hopping over the next few days as you make your way up the Banda Arc, a string of volcanic islands that forms part of the Ring of Fire. You will visit Wetar and Damar Islands and go ashore to a local village to meet the locals and see their way of life as they dry their catch on the beach. Spend the day swimming and beaching, snorkeling and exploring, and indulge in a bit of local culture by way of ‘sopi’, a strong alcoholic drink made from a local palm tree. The crew will set up for a beach BBQ, and you will dance and sing your way into the night before heading off again for an overnight cruise to your next destination.

You will visit a very simple village where the people’s houses are made using the products of the sago palm, the staple crop in this part of the world. The villagers will demonstrate for you how they process the heart of the sago palm into the edible product that sustains them. You will pass by an uninhabited island that is home to tens of thousands of seabirds (brown and red-footed boobies and frigate birds), who will likely come out to encircle the boat in great numbers on your approach. If the tide allows, you will go ashore and investigate, and surely have a snorkel. You will enjoy a full day at sea as you do a long crossing to the legendary Banda Islands – home of nutmeg, mace, and mystery.

By dawn, you should have the Banda Archipelago ‘Spice Islands’ in your sights, original home of the nutmeg and the scene of much bloodshed between the colonial powers of Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries over control of the spice trade. You will visit Pulau Run, England’s very first colony, as well as Pulau Ai, where you will visit Fort Revenge, built by the Dutch in the 17th century. In the capital, Banda Neira, with its quaint, characterful streets, a museum, churches, a waterfront market, and forts. Just across the harbor is Banda’s perfect, jungle-clad volcanic cone Gunung Api (‘Fire Mountain). You will also visit the other small islands of the Banda archipelago – Lonthor, 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..

You will observe the age-old technique of harvesting nutmeg by hand, and can 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 whilst 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.