Learning about Banda in Eastern Indonesia

This evening I had dinner with Mike Hillis from Unexplored Adventures, a diving / jungle trekking business based in Ambon, in Eastern Indonesia. Mike was out there recently taking his PADI diving course. While he was there he spent a week in Banda, one of the islands the Dutch used for trading. Mike said that he felt like he was on the set of a Hollywood movie. Banda was 20 times more beautiful than he could imagine, with great diving. There is only one small plane in and out of there every week, and they have a selection of old Dutch town houses. Fortunately for Mike, he is in with the governor, who owns most of the hotels, and who has deliberately restricted tourist development, so his hotels can be full.

Ambon and Banda are part of what used to be called ‘the Spice Islands’. They are what Christopher Columbus was searching for when he found America. Columbus’s mandate was to find the islands where mace, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg were from. He had a box filled with these and would ask natives if their island grew these. On his voyages to the Americas natives would say’ No we don’t have that here, but maybe on the next island.’ He never found the Spice Islands, as he was completely on the wrong side of the World.

The culture out there tends to be more Polynesian than Asian and I think it would be awesome to get out there and explore.