Banda Neira is one of ten volcanic islands in the Banda Archipelago which are best known as the fabled Spice Islands of ancient times. They were once the sole source of two rare and lucrative spices - mace and nutmeg, which both come from the Myristica tree. The spices are well known for their preservative qualities and were once thought to be a cure for the bubonic plague. In the pictures below, the red covering is the mace and the nut that it covers is the nutmeg. The fellow who could easily be mistaken for a Balinese temple god is our esteemed National Geographic photographer, Mark Thiessen.
Once worth their weight in gold, these spices were highly coveted by the Dutch, the Portuguese, and the British, and many lives were lost in battles to gain control of the Islands and the spice trade. Remnants of a once great trading centre in Banda Neira are the majestic Dutch fort with its cannon, high up on a hill overlooking Neira’s Bay, and huge colonial palaces.
Neira is one of only three inhabited islands in the Banda group and the only one with flat enough space to allow a small town. We spent the morning touring the town under threatening skies, and I swear the humidity must have been 110%. It was a great place to wander through, with an interesting combination of the elegant and the completely run down. True to the nature of the Indonesian people, we were given a very friendly welcome. And yes, just in case you are wondering, there were dancers!
Instead of going snorkeling this afternoon, Mike and I went out in the glass bottom zodiac. It works remarkably well and we could get some great views of the lovely corals and the fish that inhabit them. Tom Ritchie was driving the zodiac and he knows a lot about the marine world so it had an advantage over snorkeling in that we had him there to name and explain the amazing sea life we were seeing.