Hostile Locals and Volcanos
20/03/2020 Banda, The Spice Islands, Indonesia
We made it to Banda, barely. What a perfect day on the water yesterday. No sailing and absolutely no wind or waves either, but still perfect. The water was like glass all day without a ripple on it. This continued into the night as well giving us an amazing nighttime show. The bright stars in the moonless sky reflected off of the incredibly calm water like a mirror. At one point in the middle of the night I stood up to have a look around and I got a little dizzy as it felt as if we were flying through space. It was incredible!
We motored through the night and arrived at Banda around 7am just as we predicted. As soon as we got some internet we were all aver the news getting the latest on the corona apocalypse. As we were reading Vanja came across a message from a boat that is leaving Banda this morning because the locals asked them to in a not so nice way. We immediately adjusted our course so that we wouldn’t arrive directly in town and went around the corner out of view. We found FC as they had done the same thing, albeit at 3am.
We settled in and had breakfast before contact FC to find out if they had heard the same thing we had. Chris said yes and he had already contacted Abba, a local hotel owner and cruiser liaison to see what was going on. Abba was glad he called and organised quarantine to come out to check us all for COVID-19. Abba came with them to smooth over everything and offer assistance for provisioning, laundry and fuel. We asked him about the other boat that was told to go away. He said yes, the locals came to the boat and basically told them they weren’t welcome here. Abba was not involved as the other boat didn’t call him. ‘It’s a good thing you did’ he said.
Without going into too much detail Abba told us that the local villagers are scared of the virus and believe that the foreigners are the ones who are bringing it in. Since we are foreigners, we aren’t very welcome here. Abba is basically negotiating on our behalf for us to stay. We aren’t allowed to come to town, nor step foot on land near any village. He will do the shopping for us and bring it to the boat, so it’s not all bad.
It’s not the nicest arrival we’ve had, but at least we weren’t turned away by a bunch of angry locals.
21/03/2020 Banda, The Spice Islands, Indonesia
Last night after all the chaos of the morning, Abba called Chris and organised for us to do a spice tour this morning. We were all pretty excited as this sort of implied our quarantining was possibly over and maybe the locals weren’t so bad after all. Well, he called first thing this morning to cancel because none of the guides wanted to take the dirty-flea-ridden-foreigners.
We all sunk into a bit of a depression the rest of the day as all we could do was sit on the boat and read the endless stream of bad news coming out from the rest of the world. By the end of the day it was quite clear that the locals did not want us here. We had endless discussions on what to do and where to go, going around in circles. To top things off we heard from Abba that a ferry just arrived from Ambon and none of the foreigners were allowed to disembark, but of course all the virus carrying locals were allowed to walk free.
One good bit of news came at the end of the day though which was a nice surprise. Abba called and said that we could do the volcano walk if we wanted to. So that’s the plan for tomorrow.
22/03/2020 Banda, The Spice Islands, Indonesia
Against all odds we had an absolutely amazing day today. We got up at 5:30am this morning to tackle the humongous 700m high active volcano just 600m away. We jumped in the dinghy, picked up Sayo and Aya and went looking for the blue house on stilts where Abba said the walk started. We found it after a few confused stops, tied up the dinghy and started for the top.
The first 15 mins was through some gorgeous rainforest with due clinging to all the spider webs and dripping off of the large ferns. The path slowly got steeper as we went on and the ground and vegetation changed dramatically every 20 minutes. At one point we were climbing up a path of tree routes before a sudden change in scenery found us on our hands and knees trying not to slide back down the path of perfectly round volcanic rocks. It was one of the most diverse and challenging bush walks I’ve ever been on. Beautiful too. Every so often the canopy would open up giving us a stunning view of the town below and of the surrounding mountains.
By the time we got to the top it was almost 10am. So, it was quite the walk up! The kids were obviously tired, but in good spirits for most of the way. When we finally got to the crater the clouds rolled over us completely blocking our view of everything. We could see 10m in front of us, but it made the view down into the crater seem really high, like we were standing above the clouds. It was amazing. They eventually cleared for long enough for us to have a good look around and get some photos. There were a bunch of cracks in the ground where steam was escaping and the kids looked at them in awe and couldn’t comprehend how they could be so hot.
The trip back down the mountain was fraught with danger as the slippery path was even more difficult to negotiate with gravity working with you. Then the rains came. And not just a bit of drizzle, a total drenching. We were breathing water it was so thick. Nice though since it was quite warm. By the time we got to the bottom everyone was bruised and battered, but thrilled at having made it back down mostly unscathed.
23/03/2020 Banda, The Spice Islands, Indonesia
Another day of endless circular planning and talk of COVID-19. Travelling as a group certainly has it’s benefits, but it can also be quite challenging. Family Circus want to go to Rote to wait out the apocalypse. This is mainly so that Chris has a place to surf. Fair enough! It is also claimed to have friendly locals by a cruiser who’s there at the moment. There is also good separation between the town and the anchorage and a local cruiser liaison to help with provisioning and fuel if need be. All valid points to go there. ZigZag want to go in a similar direction, West, as they want to continue on as they always have as the goal for them is to be in Sri Lanka next March. Rote is Southwest, so ZigZag need a little convincing, but I think they’ll go with Family Circus.
We, on the other hand, don’t really know what to do. We would of course keep going with the others if this stupid virus wasn’t a thing. Our issue, or not, is that we have an extra option that the other 2 boats don’t have. We have the option to stay close to Australia and bug out if the worst thing imaginable happens - we run out of beer. Just kidding, we ran out of beer weeks ago. If we go with the other boats to Rote then we are basically closing down that option as by the time we get there the NE monsoon will be over and we would be beating into pretty strong winds and current if we ever did need to go back to Australia. In the current environment I think that’s a pretty good option to hold onto.
24/03/2020 Banda, The Spice Islands, Indonesia
We decided this morning that we will break up with the group and head East while we still can. The Kai islands should have everything we need to wait out the next few weeks/months. We won’t be alone, as Storyteller, the boat we met back at the waterfall anchorage, will be there somewhere. They only have a month left on their visa, so they wanted to stay close to Aus in case Timor Leste is still closed. They’re there now and have said the locals are being friendly and that there is a guy there to help with provisioning and such.
It was hard telling the others we were going to leave. Part of me thinks it’s a mistake, but at the same time everything is so uncertain at the moment I just don’t think we should drop the Australia option, especially during the height of Indonesian panic. The kids seem to be taking it pretty well, though it’s probably hard for them to understand what’s going on.
We had a nice evening with everyone where the kids put on a cool acrobatics show on our boat before a beautiful sunset followed by a goodbye pot luck on FC. I will definitely miss these guys.