SeaTrek to the Scents of the Spice Islands with Nikki, Coral Specialist

On the first day of your adventure, you will be collected from your hotel after breakfast by our tour leaders and taken directly to the boat, which will be waiting at anchor in Ambon Harbour. As soon as everyone is settled in and the captain gets clearance from the harbour master, we will raise anchor and head south across the open sea, crossing to the legendary Banda Archipelago.

The Banda Islands are renowned for their natural beauty and cultural heritage, and 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, and is filled with the well-preserved remnants of an extraordinary history of imperialist rivalry.

Since conditions of wind and tide will determine the order in which we visit various Banda islands, our activities here can’t be assigned to a particular day, but here’s what we aim to cover.

In the capital Banda Neira, with its quaint, characterful streets, a museum, churches and a waterfront market, and imposing forts. Just across the harbour is Banda’s perfect, jungle-clad volcanic cone Gunung Api (‘Fire Mountain’ – 640 metres).

We 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.

We will observe the age-old technique of harvesting nutmeg by hand, and can taste (and buy) baked goods, condiments, and jams flavoured with fresh mace and nutmeg. The fruit enclosing the nutmeg seed is sold dried and has a unique and intense flavour. It is a delicacy rarely obtainable outside the Banda Islands.

There are some excellent coral reefs here, and we should see some amazing marine life whilst snorkelling. Ironically, in the less-than-pristine waters of the harbor, we have a good chance of seeing (at dusk) arguably the world’s most stunning fish, the small but jewel-like Mandarin Fish.

Leaving Banda, we 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 we 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 WWII-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.

We 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, we will cruise on towards our next destination.

We 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 we can launch our full flotilla of watercraft, kayaks, and paddle boards. On Obi, mountains clad in forest and clove plantations plunge spectacularly into the sea, and we 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 we encounter friendly fishers and their outrigger dugouts, colourful timber island-trading craft, and sometimes little sloops still trading under sail.

We 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 Guraici Archipelago, a chain of islands with white sandy beaches, vibrant coral reefs, and some lovely local villages. We 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, colourful houses, and the ruins of an old Portuguese fort, and its importance in the history of science cannot be understated.

Today, finds us in Ternate, once the centre 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.

We 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 1540.

We 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.