Indonesia
Calls wake us in the first light of day. Off Banda Neira, two longboats surge alongside the Le Soleal, each carrying around two dozen rowers while a stroke drums the beat.
Eleven nights aboard Le Soléal across the Banda Sea to Raja Ampat – rowers who come out to meet the ship, the islands where nutmeg once grew and nowhere else, reefs home to three quarters of the world’s coral species and a yellow coconut leaf that closes a reef.
33 pictures from the Spice Islands to Raja Ampat: Banda Neira, where nutmeg was once worth a war. Karst cones in turquoise lagoons, a village marching out sixty dancers in feather crowns – and on the Kei Islands a monitor lizard that science has only known since 2019.
It’s off to a good start: sunburn, heat stroke, insect bites. Broken leg, dehydration, diarrhoea. Ida Vincent of Biosphere Expeditions initiates nearly a dozen dedicated conservationists from Germany, Austria, Italy, the US and Australia into the hazards of the Sumatran jungle.
Images from my Sumatra expedition with WWF’s Tiger Conservation Patrol and Biosphere Expeditions.