This morning we had to be all packed and checked out of our hotel rooms by 7:00 a.m. to catch a ride to the airport for our trip to Ambon where we would get on the Archipelago Adventurer II, which is our liveaboard boat. The trip took about five hours total and when we arrived in Ambon some of the crew from the ship were there to help transport us to the boat. The boat itself is 110 feet long and they have 22 crewmembers onboard. Once we had gotten settled into our rooms they fixed us a snach and then we had a safety orientation. In addition to the nine people in our group there are two guys from Australia, one French man from Jakarta, and one French man from Hong Kong. Since the boat isn't full I have my own room, which is nice since I had to sleep on a four-foot long couch in Bali.
We had some free time before dinner so most of us went up to the top deck and watched the sunset and lounged until dinner was ready. For dinner we had some tomato soup, chicken stuffed with spinach for the meat eaters, snapper with a lime and garlic sauce for the "vegetarians" (including myself), and some fruit and ice cream inside of a half a coconut for dessert.
Tonight we head for the Banda Islands, which are a part of the Indonesian province of Maluku and full of history. The spices clove and nutmeg are native to Maluku and for a long time were only cultivated here. In the 16th and 17th centuries the Portuguese, Dutch and English all fought to control the spice trade in Maluku and more specifically in the Banda Islands. Eventually the Dutch gained control, but they had to give up New Amsterdam (Manhattan), New Jersey and Delaware in exchange for the Banda island of Run, which is the first island we will be visiting.
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