Rinca Adventures

We have walked back in time. This landscape is stark, dramatic, and a keeper of hidden life. Hills climb and roll, covered in knee high golden grasses that bow in the wind. Scrubby bushes push their way through the dry earth with leathery green leaves shimmering in the blistering heat. Stark white rocks with ribbons of red stand regally amidst the golden hills, looking like something should be crouched upon them. Long-tall palms reach high into the cornflower blue sky, shedding their skin of old brown jagged leaves as they climb up, up, up, towering at least a hundred and twenty feet high. They rattle when the wind caresses them.

Walking through the nearly dry riverbed in search of dragons we look through the heat, listening. It is never quiet here in daylight. Lizards rustle in the dry brown leaves and scurry from beneath our feet, voles dive into holes upon our approach and a brown long haired wild pig lopes awkwardly away once it senses our presence. Seven komodo dragons lounge in the sun lazily opening and closing their eyes waiting.

The largest of them are over three meters long and weigh as much as 9o kilograms. Their scales resemble armor and their camouflage is so perfected we almost walked into one nestled in some downed logs. These creatures are the largest dragons in the world. They sense their prey with their good eyesight and long yellow snakelike forked tongues. While in this riverbed they look docile and awkward, yet they are good hunters.

They are waiting in the riverbed for the huge water buffalo they attacked to die of its septic wounds inflicted by the bites from the dragons. Once they have bitten their prey, depending on how many bites the animal has and how big it is it will take a week to two weeks to die of its bacteria infested wounds and the dragons will wait to feast. The dragons can sprint on their muscled hind legs lifting their gigantic tails and look like an over pumped steroid filled body builder swaggering like they know they dominate. They can smell blood from 5 kilometers away. And they can swim, not that far but they can swim.

We sat in the riverbed in late afternoon, below 3 dragons lazing on the hill and 5 buffaloes sitting up to their necks in the last pools of water in the riverbed. We sat not 50 feet from one buffalo peacefully listening to him snort and chew. Missing his two lower two front teeth he was almost comical despite his long curved horns and gigantic bulk. Hundreds of small flies circled his head and he responded by dipping his horns gracefully and tossing water about his head. It was really special to be able to sit so close to two species of very powerful animals.

We climbed out of the riverbed back up into the dry hills reveling in the use of our legs again and the stunning views that stretched forever past the hundreds of skinny trunked big leaf headed long-tall palms and over the hammered gold hills to the undulating islands beyond.

Long-tailed macaque monkeys hung above us, eating the fruits of the female palms. The leaves rattled and our sweat dried with the wind. Our guide gambled and asked us if we wanted to walk further to try to find the wild horses if we were lucky. We had wanted to do the 9 k walk this morning but the price for the non-regulation hike was a ridiculous $35 dollars in comparison to $5 for the 5 k hike, so we declined as it just seemed like too much of a scam. We both got lucky. We went for the horses.

Walking quickly through waist high grass, we stumbled over small iron red rocks and past groves of low scrubby trees. We heard the pounding of hooves before we saw 15 black buffalo heading away from us, dust rising from their hooves. They settled under another grove of trees and we watched them while deer bounded through the grass. The sun was sinking and with its descent the dew began to make its appearance. The sharp pungent odors of the grasses and trees revealed themselves as the temperature dropped and the light faded. With the sun in our faces we looked toward the hills to see the elusive wild hoses. Two of them stood regally under a scraggly tree.

There was something magical about that moment, perhaps because we had found them, but likely because we were out in the hills of the park with no one else around, the sun igniting the grasses like fire and our senses fully involved. But we were running out of time.

Navigating through the high grasses strewn with rocks and boulders in deepening twilight in near silence we were reminded of another time in our lives. My thoughts were intermittently interrupted with our guide saying "hati, hati" (careful, careful) after he stumbled on a hidden rock or root. As darkness settled upon us, the big dipper hung above us in the northern sky and more stars began to twinkle. We weren't following an established trail and we likely would have been sleeping under the stars had we had to find our way back to the ranger station alone. After another half hour of slowly heading down hill we made it to the main trail. Thanking our guide and walking back to the boat landing under the star-studded sky we reveled in our tired legs and the longest day of the year, giving thanks that animals and places like this still exist.

Labuanbajo

With our usual ADD tendencies, we woke up, poured a cup and pulled the anchor. It was only 12 miles to the town of Labuanbajo and we were restless to get there, re-provision and move on to Komodo National Park.

Overnight the wind had died and we woke to glassy conditions and a hot ball of sunshine. We motored past and around close to fifty varying sized fishing boats anchored or drifting over the shallow shoals in the bays. Small closely-knit fishing villages sat perched on stilts on the edges of the sea. The waters colors were distinct deeper greens and aqua blues depending on the depth. The hills were covered in thick brown grass and rich volcanic rocks dotted the landscape. Palm trees sprouted intermittently throughout the valleys and draws.

In a couple of hours we were weaving our way through the myriad of islands surrounding the mainland town. We steered clear of the main boat anchorage, choosing instead to anchor 2 miles south of town in front of a little resort called the Bajo Komodo Eco-Lodge, a place we had read about from other sailors, who said they were friendly, accommodating, and helpful to visiting boats. We had also read that the harbormaster in town wasn't always too pleasant, hassling sailboats for extra paperwork and extra rupiah dollars. The town anchorage itself was said to have some petty theft problems. We chose to avoid the harbormaster and town altogether, figuring we'd had enough officialdom for a while and as long as we could stay under the radar outside of town we would be fine.

We dropped our hook in 20 feet of thick sandy mud, the shallowest we have anchored in a year. We have gotten so used to having to anchor in deeper water, often 70-100 feet in Palau and Raja Ampat, dropping in under 50 feet nowadays feels extremely shallow! For all you sailors, our waypoint in front of the resort is: 8˚31.1' S, 119˚52.1' E
There's room for heaps of boats here.

We dinghied in and introduced ourselves to the girls managing the hotel. They were all extremely friendly and very happy to have us around. We were the first boat to have visited in 2009, but when the SailIndonesia rally comes through in July/August they do get many boats anchoring in front of the hotel. Sidenote...Since leaving Palau we have only seen one other sailboat and that is our German friends on the boat, Alk, who left Palau a week before us. We last saw them in Sorong over 2 months ago and since then not one other sailboat.

The hotel was happy to do our laundry, serve us dinner, watch our dinghy on the beach at night, and help us out with getting some diesel. The guys who do maintenance/landscaping working there even shuttled us up one morning to the local fresh food market a bit out of town on their ojeks. On top of all the help from the resort, the anchorage itself was very peaceful, not rolly, safe, and quiet at night. We really couldn't have asked for anyplace better.

The town of Labuanbajo itself is an eclectic little fishing village, weathered and crumbly, but with character. It was fun to walk around and check out the thousands of fish that we think are sardines drying on big nets in the sun on the waterfront. There are a few good shops to get some fresh food, but the fresh food market up the hill is really the way to go. It is great. We went on Saturday morning and it was busy with packs of people and hundreds of stalls set up. Most of the people are Muslim but seemed genuinely happy to have two white tourists poking around their world, bartering for fruits and vegetables, asking funny questions in broken Bahasa Indonesia and taking some photos. Once again we stuck out like sore thumbs and were constantly stared at and followed around, but in a non-threatening way. Overall the people in the market were extremely friendly.

Even though Labuanbajo is a bit of a tourist town, because it is the gateway to Komodo National Park for boats and charters, we think most tourists don't go to the local market, hence the interest in us being there. After an hour, we were loaded up with fresh food for our next adventure to Komodo.

After 2 days we were ready to move on. We had looked into going diving with a boat from town, but the 3 hours each way through the rough currents and winds sounded dreadful. We decided that we were more in the mood for long walks on land rather then more time on boats and in the water. There is a place on north Komodo called Crystal Rock and Castle Rock we still may get to dive on our own. We'll see.

We picked up our clean clothes, said good-bye to all the great people working at the hotel and shoved off for Rinca Island in Komodo National Park.

A Beauty of a Passage

Passages come in every flavor. Some are dreadful; you are never comfortable, never dry, or never warm. Fighting currents, wind, dodging fishing boats and floating debris and massive squalls, you are constantly on alert and you don't get much rest, let alone time to pull out a book.

But some passages are gifts from the gods. These are the ones you remember, the ones you cherish. These passages make up for all the bad ones and keep the balance, making sure you remember why you chose to go sailing around the world in the first place. This most recent passage from Ambon to Flores turned out to be one of these, a real gem.

After clearing the Ambon entrance currents once again, this time with nowhere near the confusion of standing waves and squally rainy conditions when we arrived, we set a SW course with a reefed main and unfurled our full 130% Genoa. For the first two days the wind was fairly consistent at 12-25 knots from the SW to the SSW and we had a nice beamish reach with seas only 2-4 feet, our Monitor windvane holding the course easily. Fluffy high-pressure cumulus clouds danced around the sky and the mighty golden orb of the sun kept the heat on in the day. At night it cooled off considerably, our first time reaching for the cockpit blanket to curl up with on watch since, I think, the passage from New Zealand to Fiji over a year ago. At night the stars beamed revealing Saturn, the Southern Cross and Alpha and Beta Centauri, and the huge constellation of Scorpio off to our southeast. The waning moon rose late but had plenty of light still for half the night to illuminate the liquid world we sped through.

Our passage lasted 4 ½ days and was roughly 520 miles in distance. The last half of it we traveled more west then south, heading along the northern coast of Flores, passing through another time zone and entering more of the local fishing areas. The wind grew more spotty and we chose to motor sail off and on, but the seas stayed small and made the trip downright comfortable no matter what our sail plan. We each read two books and listened to plenty of "This American Life" podcasts, great stories to sink into when you can't stare at a book page any longer, especially in the middle of the night.

The last night was our busiest with fishing boats. They seemed to be everywhere and I even had to change course around a set long line with blinking lights everywhere for the net's marking poles. An hour later I was on a collision course with a small fishing prahu boat that was too small to pick up on our radar. We got to within 500 yards of each other and I turned on the spreader lights to light up our decks and show them we were a sailboat, sailing, and instantly he stopped and changed course. Unfortunately, this technique doesn't work with the freighters.

The last day the wind came up strong at 20-30 knots, but we were fighting a 2-knot current against us as we watched the daylight hours tick by trying to arrive at our intended anchorage. In the early afternoon we fought through the even stronger currents to enter the passage through the reefs, but once through, everything mellowed. The winds dropped and the current was nearly flat. We had just rounded the western point of Flores and were now piloting around a group of islands just offshore from the mainland, an arid desert-looking landscape of dry grasses, sandstone and volcanic rocks, and big white sand beaches. Many small fishing villages dotted the shoreline and fishing outriggers and prahus were tacking all over the water.

We rounded the corner in the lee of Pulau Sabibi, anchoring at 8˚22.1' S, 120˚01.0' E in 45-50' of water surrounded by coral reefs and in front of a large sandy beach. A couple of fishing boats were tied up to mangroves close by and another dugout was spearfishing the reef off the point. We were told monkey's lived on shore but we didn't see any.

We had arrived in a whole new world. Dry, hot, and cool at night, not a squall on the horizon. In fact, we didn't see a squall the whole passage and not a drop of rain! So strange. We are so so so very used to getting hammered by at least one thunderstorm or massive rainsquall every day or two, sometimes all day long, that with the absence of that reality, it feels like we have left the tropics. It's sure nice to stay dry and be able to keep our hatches open, but the downside is our boat is coated with a layer of salt and we can't catch rainwater anymore. The latter being the big bummer.

We are happy to be here, ready for new adventures in a new region of Indonesia. Blessings to the sea gods and cold Bintangs for the kids as we stretch out in the cockpit and watch the heat of the sun sink away into the western Flores Sea.

Officialdom in Ambon

We sailed out of the protected anchorage of Bandaneira and watched the volcano, Gunung Api, slowly slip into the sea. Pulau Run could be seen a few miles away. In the hey-dey of the spice trade, the miniscule island of Run was worth a fortune because of the nutmeg growing on it. In 1667 the British actually traded it to the Dutch for North American's island of Manhattan.

We were officially on passage again, but a short one, only 120 miles to the city of Ambon. A steady SE breeze filled in and the seas were only a few feet, overall it looked like it would be a nice sail. Then our instruments went out. All of them. Fun fun fun. For the next 2 hours I tore everything apart where our electronic "sea talk" connections are located. I pulled and looked at every wire. My head was in the bilge, under the steering column, and in the lazarette. It didn't take long for me to feel seasick. Blah. First day out and in the rolly seas and my heads in the bilge, not where I perform the best. Finally, I pulled a larger connection on the autopilot "brain" and 5 minutes later things are working again. Phew! We crossed our fingers and hoped it wouldn't repeat itself. Thankfully it didn't.

After a pleasant sail through the night with clear starry skies we arrived to the current-swept entrance to Ambon harbor where the huge rain squalls awaited us. It was 7 a.m. and Nicole just finished her watch and went below to sleep. I poured a big cup of coffee, bundled up in full raingear and donned the Ipod in its waterproof case. I piloted DK through the chaotic standing waves while the reggae dub beats synched with my morning coffee buzz. The rainsqualls hammered us incessantly and the small prahu fishing boats zigged and zagged around us dragging for tuna as we surfed the currenty standing waves. Finally we rounded the cape and were met by almost glassy conditions in the lee of the Ambon peninsula. It had been an exciting morning. I looked down below at Nicole; she had slept through it all.

An hour of motoring inside the bay while listening to some new NPR's "This American Life" our friend Marit hooked us up with in Misool (Thank You Marit!!), we dropped our hook in front of a small community called Amahusu. About 7 km SW from the main city of Ambon, Amahusu is nice and mellow and there is a beach and hotel there for easy access to shore. It seemed like a fine anchorage, at least at first.

A few hours later I found myself on the back of an ojek (Indonesian motorbike) heading for the harbormaster's office. Once again, long pants, collared shirt, shoes, shaved face, and my officially looking bag carrying all our paperwork, ship's stamps, and rupiah money (for the, just in case, "greasing the wheels" possibilities).

My first taste of Ambon. Much larger then Sorong, our only other Indonesian city to this point, Ambon was bustling with movement and energy. People were everywhere and traffic was busy. Not being much of a tourist city, once again everyone stared, smiled, and yelled "Hello Mister" as I rode by.

Kota Ambon is the capital of the Maluku islands in Indonesia with a population of almost 400,000 people. Most recently, from 1999-2002, unfortunately Ambon was the epicenter of inter-communal violence between the Christian and Muslim people. In 2001, it is said the city looked similar to the 1980's Beirut, torn apart and battle-scarred. Nowadays, the city is once again bustling with life, economic activity, and the religious tensions have eased.

My first trip to the harbormaster was easy. I chatted it up with some of the young office staff, dropped off my paperwork, and then headed to Quarantine. It was dumping again, but luckily I remembered to bring an umbrella and so I plodded onward in the rain. After a few missed attempts at finding the right office, I was directed correctly to an obscure building on a side street where I clomped in wet and muddy. The office workers were all very friendly and after I was shuffled between 5 different officials, all stamping forms or typing papers, I was finished. No one spoke much English and my Bahasa is still poorly inadequate, but we all stumbled through our conversations and I left smiling and thankful that I only had one more stop to make.

I hailed another ojek, my preferred transportation of choice, as they are so much fun and efficient weaving through the crazy streets and busy traffic. Plus, for 5000 rupiah, or about 50 cents, they will take you anywhere in town right away. If you ride the Bemo's, which are the little mini-van's that shuttle people around, they mostly have set stops and routes and, although cheaper at 3000 rupiah, can take 2-3x as long. Plus they are boring.

We zipped through the streets and up the hill on the other side of town to the Immigration office. As I walked in the front door, I crossed my fingers. This was our last "officialdom" hurdle. The only reason we even came to Ambon was to come to this particular office to renew our passport Visa.

Let me just take a minute to explain what we had to do "to even come" to Indonesia. The following explanation may be a bit boring to some of you, but I think it's interesting to note what we have to deal with to visit some of these countries. It all started month's ago, in January, when we were in Palau--

To sail your boat in Indonesia you need 3 things. First is a boat permit called a CAIT. To do this you need to send in the appropriate paperwork and money to an organization that does this service. We used Bali Marina. This takes between 1-2 months. Next you need a sponsorship letter. We also paid Bali Marina for this. Once you have received these two papers you can apply for your passport social visas. To do this you need to send your paperwork, including your CAIT and sponsorship letter and passports, to an official Indonesian Embassy. We FedEx'ed all our papers to a service in San Francisco who deals with Visa's and delivers the paperwork to the Embassy. Sending your passports overseas is pretty scary, hence the use of an agency in the U.S. and using FedEx. Once all this is finished you are "supposedly" allowed to enter Indonesia (it took us about 3 months).

But that's not all. All of these "Visa's" only last so long. Our CAIT is good for 3 months, and then it needs to be extended again, for a maximum allotment of 6 months. Our passport Visa's are only good for 2 months, then need to be renewed each month. To renew our passport Visa we are supposed to have a new sponsorship letter; someone or some organization who is kind of looking after us.

Talk about ridiculous, but here is where it even gets crazier. In 2004 a new Indonesian law was passed stating that sailing yachts were considered luxury goods and needed to have a "bond" of up to 45% of the yacht value placed in an Indonesian bank for the boat to be in this country. At your first Indonesian port you are supposed to pay this fee and when you leave Indonesia you are supposedly to get this money returned in full. There are many problems with this law. First of all, there is no central banking system that you can use to deposit and withdraw from in different parts of Indonesia. Indonesia is huge! There are over 17,000 islands in this country and so many ports to arrive at and leave from. Let's say, for example, we are checking into Sorong in the West Papua region. We should, by law, have to pay our "bond" of up to 45% of the boat's value. A lot of money for us. Then, 6 months later we check out of another part of the country a thousand plus miles away and need to have our bond money returned, but, wait, the "same" bank is nowhere to be found, and even if it was, Indonesia is not known for it's secure and honest methods of dealing with money. Catch my drift??

But here's the deal. Most ports in Indonesia have not been upholding the "bond" law, until this year. Now it seems like many of the "busy" ports like Kupang, in West Timor, and even Benoa, in Bali, want this money. The reality is no sailing boat is crazy enough to pay it. This is creating quite a stir this year in the sailing community. Because of the complexities of Visa's and the bond law, most sailboats coming to Indonesia do so through a rally. The largest one, Sail Indonesia, which leaves from Darwin, Australia, in the middle of July hosts over 100 boats with another 50 or so on the waiting list. They deal with all the Visa's and also put on a number of cultural performances and parties at different stops along their traveled path through many of the islands in this country.

In our case, coming from Palau and entering into Indonesian waters at Sorong, West Papua, joining a rally wasn't an option, nor would we want to join anyway. To each their own, but we can't imagine being with a group of 100 plus boats sailing to most of the same anchorages. Even if the boats do split up a bit, most of the main anchorages still get very busy. For example, the anchorage at Rinca Island in Komodo National Park, where we just came from, is small and tight for a handful of boats. When the rally boats are around this area, supposedly there can be 20 or more boats vying for an anchoring spot in this little wind-swept bay. When we were there it was just us. The reason, however, that most boats, in my opinion, join the rally, is to have it easier with all the Visa's and official paperwork. Many boats are afraid to "do it on their own" or just don't want to spend the time and energy to sort it out themselves. The rally isn't stupid. The bureaucratic mess of paperwork and Visa's in Indonesia really keeps their numbers up and they have a nice little business going. For to join the rally you have to pay a substantial fee as well.

Our first port of entry in Indonesia was Sorong. We gambled checking in here. Because only a few boats a year call on that city, we were hoping they didn't even know about the "bond law". For us, that was the case. Thankfully no one even asked about it and we checked-in with zero problems.

So, back to the present, our last official hurdle: getting an extension to our Visa in Ambon, a place we heard rumors it was possible, but no concrete evidence. The reality was if they wouldn't or couldn't renew our Visa we didn't know what we would do. Nicole maybe would have to fly to Bali with our passports or maybe we would just have to sail straight to Bali and pay big extra fees for being late on renewing our expired Visa's.

I was met at the counter by a few officials, one of them named, Army, who took me under his wing and told me "no problem", we could renew our Visa's there. I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

When I asked Army about whom would "sponsor" us, another unresolved possible obstacle, he said, "you can sponsor yourself". Hello, are you kidding??!! What a concept. For a much smaller fee then what we paid Bali Marina to sponsor us before, about 1/3 of the price, we could just be responsible for ourselves. This is how ridiculous it all is. Army helped me fill out paperwork and told me to come back the next day with Nicole to get our pictures and fingerprints taken. No worries.

We arrived the next day on the back of two ojek's weaving through the rain. This was Nicole's first time off the boat in many days as she'd been sick from the flu. Army met us with a big smile and within an hour we had our pics shot, fingerprints taken, and money delivered, about $40 each for everything. Army told me he could hand deliver our passports that night or in the morning in Amahusu, where we were anchored, as he lived in the village too.

Nicole and I jumped in a Bemo and went to the crazy fresh food market on the waterfront. Wandering the tightly-packed alleys and streets we perused the thousands of colorful stalls filled with things like drying fish, live chickens with their legs bound, cartons of quail eggs, and hundreds of recognizable and not so recognizable fruits and vegetables. Sandwiched between the hordes of people, bicycles, ojeks, and cars, we weaved our way through the masses and periodically stopped to purchase some fresh goodies. Our favorites being the large tasty local avocados. Everywhere we stopped to look closer at the produce, a group of people would gather around us and watch our interactions, curious at the white western people and what we were buying at the market. Everyone was very friendly and within an hour we were weighed down with bags of produce including a few large green coconuts hanging from our fingers. Nicole was exhausted, her first day off the boat and right into this chaotic tumble of energy. We hopped on a couple of ojeks and away we went.

At 7 p.m. that night Army called and said he was at the hotel on shore. I took the dinghy in to the beach, met Army, looked at our new Visa extensions on our passports, shook Army's hand and slipped him some extra rupiah, and we both left with big smiles on our faces. Relieved and so appreciative at how smoothly that had all gone.
Back on the boat, it wasn't so smooth. The swell had managed to wrap itself into the bay and the currents and winds were coming from different directions making our boat roll profusely in every way possible. Bad rolling equals no sleeping.

In the morning I was extremely grumpy having not slept well for the last two nights. We debated what to do as we still needed to officially "check out" with the harbormaster and tomorrow was Friday, which superstitiously is a day you can't start a passage on and we now abide by. If you care to know details about this experience you can read back on our webpage journal "Pacific Passage" from Mexico to the Marquesas for a little story about what happened to us then.

We decided to move the 7 miles of so into the inner protected harbor on the northeast side of Ambon and find a peaceful non-rolly anchorage. We lifted our hook and motored past downtown Ambon and through the narrow passage into the big protected bay. As we passed the Navy station inside the bay, alo and behold, a Navy boat sped up to us with 3 men on board, more like teenage boys wanting to know what we were doing. They spoke broken English and we communicated the best we could where we were going and that we had already checked in with the harbormaster in Ambon, etc. We really didn't want these guys poking around our boat and kept trying to tell them everything was ok and we were just anchoring in the bay because it was so calm. Finally we gave them our mobile phone number and some copies of our paperwork and they left smiling and happy to have had contact with a western sailboat. We dropped our hook in the shallow muddy bay in an area lined with mangroves and small fishing platforms around us. It was a great spot, peaceful, no rolls, and no people except for some fishermen in their dugout canoes traveling to and from their bamboo fishing rafts. We sat out in the cockpit and had a cold Indonesian Bintang sunset beer when, yes, the Navy called. I couldn't understand pretty much anything he said, but in the end he explained to call him "if we had any problems". We both laughed and I said thank you. Nic and I got a total kick out of that. I think they just wanted to call and talk to us. We both slept like the dead that night.

The next day Nic dinghied me over to the shoreline a couple of miles away and I walked up to the road to catch another ojek into town. Zipping along through the Ambon hills we eventually dropped into the densely packed city and I once again returned to immigration to get our clearance paper. It only took half and hour and another ojek ride took me back down to the port to officially check out with the harbormaster. This took a little longer, but within an hour or so I was finished with all our Ambon officialdom business. Phew! A stop at the supermarket and another at the outdoor fresh food market found me with full backpacks, bags, and a carton of eggs. Another ojek ride back down to the lagoon and I was on the beach calling Nic on the handheld VHF to come pick me up. All of it only had taken a few hours. We chilled out the rest of the day, baked bread, made some passage food, read and relaxed in the peaceful lagoon.

Saturday morning arrived and after a leisurely breakfast we lifted the hook, raised our mainsail, and motor-sailed out of the bay. Good Bye and Thank You Ambon. We were now on our way to the island of Flores, 5oo miles to the SW.

The Flavor of the Bandas

We came to the Bandas Islands to see the old spice trees and remnants of the old spice wars left over from the Dutch and English East India Trading Companies. They fought wars during the 16th and 17th centuries in the remote Bandas Islands for control over the spices: nutmeg, mace, cloves, cinnamon, and peppercorns. We have stumbled over some old canons casually strewn on the side of the street seemingly waiting to be picked up and used later aide from the slick layer of moss that coats them. Stepping through the crumbling doorways of old forts we find it hard to imagine the old days. But on the hook in the stunning natural anchorage with the smoking volcano, Gunung Api and beautifully still bay I can see trading vessels and warships at anchor and can see the town bustling with action. Almost all of that is gone but for some crumbling old buildings and the hope tourism will come back to the Bandas.

Not only are the Bandas an attraction for the historical value and what little spices are still grown but also for the pristine coral reefs and clear waters off many of the islands. Through rainstorms we have snorkeled beside dried lava flows and along Hatta's coral shelves and even along the pier. We have seen some special things but we are also very spoiled and have quickly lost interest in the mandarinfish and pretty waving soft corals.

Mostly, we are appreciating the warmth and kindness of the people here. I have already made friends with three special women I can barely communicate with. A Muslim 18 year old girl who bravely approached me while I was sitting alone on a lava rock beach and proceeded to tell me about her soul mate love and sing me American love songs (the only one I recognized was "Titanic") with an angelically high pitched voice. The rest of our time together we practiced English and Indonesian and we were smiling the entire time. One woman I met at the market buying weird lemons from her (you know the kind with the warts on them that are very sour?) she taught me to say sampai jumpa (my favorite new phrase, meaning see you later), now we see each other in town
daily and I love her. We always depart with each of us laughing and almost shouting, "sampai jumpa" with huge grins on our faces. And then there was the woman in Banda Besar. We met her wandering through the old nutmeg and almond forest where she was collecting almonds, machete in hand barefoot. We came to her through a rainstorm. Then she took us walking through the forest and got us stunningly fresh nutmeg and glowing rose apples. She walked us to the village and wanted nothing. Instead we asked her for lunch and I photographed what I think were her nieces and her mother. We ate an omelet, rice and msg noodles and then had the excuse to pay her for her time. She walked us down old rock steps holding my hand and smiling the entire way. Lucky me.

The remainder of our time in the Bandas has been spent farming out our laundry to Abba's wife Dilla at the Mutiara Guest House and eating scrumptious meals with them, hanging out with our new Italian tourist friend Claudio, doing boat jobs, teaching two abysmal classes of English (remind me to take an ESL class if we ever do this again) and recovering from a nasty flu. We're leaving here with our fist's full of nutmeg, a fully stocked fridge, and a joyful heart.