Indonesia’s
Exotic Spice Islands
Islands of adventure
Indonesia is home to some of the most intrepid travel
destinations on the planet. Among them are the Spice Islands, also known as the
Moluccas or Maluku islands, an archipelago of more than 1,000 islands set on a vast
canvas of ocean that today, as in centuries past, is best explored by boat.
The roots of Indonesia’s spice trade trace back to ancient times,
when shipping routes between Africa and Indonesia were first initiated (the
first people to settle in the Spice Islands are in fact related to the people
of Madagascar), and it continued with the Portuguese, Spanish, English and
Dutch trade routes in the 16th Century.
Today, these islands are still the world’s top producers of
nutmeg, mace, cloves and pepper.
Volcanic isles
Adventurous travellers
come to the region to stay in remote villages and hike in the shadows of
perfectly conical volcanoes.
For divers, the fish and
coral below the water’s surface are just as intoxicating as the scent of nutmeg
growing topside.
A live-aboard scuba
diving boat such as the Damai
Dua (pictured) is an ideal way to explore
the islands’ highlights. Here, darkness falls on the peak of Tidore, one of the
many volcanic islands that stretches south from Ternate, another visually
dramatic cone-shaped island.
For thousands of years,
Tidore and Ternate were the world’s only producers of cloves, which originate
in this region.
Today, cloves are grown
in other countries including Madagascar and Brazil, as well as on the Comoros
islands.
Vocal welcomes
Live-aboard dive boats
will often moor near rarely-visited Spice Islands.
On the small island of
Pua (pictured), the villagers have so little exposure to outsiders that they
have yet to learn Indonesia’s ubiquitous tourist greeting (“hello mister!”).
Instead, they take the
chance to admire the Damai Dua ship, built to model a traditional Indonesian
sailing phinisi, while singing a greeting in the local language to the guests
on board.
Floating playground
On the southern tip of
Bacan Island, near the waterfront in a small village, adults busy themselves
constructing the wooden boats that they will use to fish the area’s rich seas.
Local children, on the
other hand, often can be seen jumping from the boats into the warm shallow
water, against a backdrop of black-sand beaches.
Drying spices
In addition to mangoes,
breadfruit and coconuts, villagers on Makian Island also cultivate nutmeg and
cloves. Nutmeg can often be seeing drying in baskets on the rooftops or spread
on tarps along the narrow village roads, with the red lace-like material called
mace (pictured) separated from the dark, shiny nut.
Spice as life
Ambon was once a world
centre of clove production, and the spice is still grown here today, along with
healthy crops of nutmeg and cocoa.
In one of Ambon’s many
small villages, locals gather outside a home with a recently harvested crop of
nutmeg piled into plastic bags.
Small-scale farmers sell
their crops to village collectors, who amass it with larger volumes of the crop
to then sell to exporters.
Spectacular reefs
The Spice Islands are a
popular destination for scuba divers who travel the region for the chance to
explore spectacular reefs against a backdrop of volcanic islands.
Here, a woman snorkels
over a reef in the shadow of a volcanic outcropping near Bacan Island.
Large schools of
barracuda, as well as the occasional whale shark, can often be seen swarming
nearby on the southeast corner of the island.
Hairy lobster
The long, deep harbour on Ambon Island is one of the top muck
diving destinations in the world, a type of diving that puts the focus on
bizarre marine animals – such as frog fish and other masters of disguise like
snake eels and stargazers – that make their homes on the ocean floor.
People travel to this island from around the world to dive the
harbour’s nutrient-rich, if rubbish-littered, ocean floor. This hirsute,
wild-looking purple creature is a hairy squat lobster; the bristles covering
its body help it to better scurry across sponges. (Chris
Jackson/swellimages.com)
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