The Spice islands
Wanderlust Travel Magazine|September 2020
Towering volcanoes, teeming reefs and remote rainforest... We hike, snorkel and explore the ‘Gardens of Eden’ at the fringes of Indonesia
ALEX ROBINSON
The Spice islands

I cursed Christopher Columbus. It was because of him that I was dragging myself up this confounded volcano: scrambling along a path of shifting scree, grabbing at tree roots to secure myself as I slipped yet again.

“Bloody Columbus!” I grazed my elbow after walking into a sticky spider web in the pre-dawn half-dark. It was all his fault. His success had inspired my first travels; his failure had led me here, to the slopes of the Gunung Api volcano. The explorer had spent a lifetime trying to reach the Banda archipelago – this corner of Indonesia’s Spice Islands. But Columbus had landed on Hispaniola instead, half a world away.

Inspired by him, I’d tried to visit the Spice Islands for decades. They were too expensive to reach from Bali in my backpacker days and too difficult when I returned with more money many years later. But local airlines now fly-in, connecting with traditional pinisi sailing schooners – small wooden ships with distinctive dark sails unique to Indonesia and the Philippines – like my ship, the Katharina. For centuries Indonesians slept on the deck of the original pinisis, leaving the hold for cargo and cockroaches. But with private cabins, a bar, and fabulous fresh seafood, the Katharina was boutique-hotel comfortable, my temporary home for a ten-day, 700km cruise around Banda and the forest-swathed archipelago of Raja Ampat – islands sprinkled like mossy pebbles in the deep sea around Papua New Guinea. As it turned out they could be deceptively steep, especially in the dark.

هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة September 2020 من Wanderlust Travel Magazine.

ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.

هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة September 2020 من Wanderlust Travel Magazine.

ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.

المزيد من القصص من WANDERLUST TRAVEL MAGAZINE مشاهدة الكل
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