Into the wild

An adventure exploring the remote islands of Raja Ampat on a Bugis boat called Tiger Blue

Raja Ampat is one of the uttermost places on earth. The most distant and unexplored of the 17,500 islands that make the archipelago of Indonesia scattered among the briny wastes from South East Asia to Oceania. There are no cities, no mobile signals, no Internet, and hardly any people or even boats. The few tourists that make it this far from the modern world are usually hardcore divers lured by the area’s many world-class dive sites.

I am not a diver, nor 
it turned out were many of the other passengers on board Tiger Blue, my floating home for the next five days. Tiger Blue is a customised version of a traditional broad hulled, twin mast phinisi schooner fitted out with comfortable cabins, sun loungers 
and cocktail shakers instead of holds for spices and coconuts.

We set sail 
from the tiny port of Sarong on West Papua, for five-days in search of adventures both above and below the waves. Crewed by a sun-bleached Dutch captain, a talented Belgian chef and seven smiling Indonesian sailors, Tiger Blue can be chartered by mixed groups of up to 12 family or friends to use it as they choose.

The weather is changeable in these tropical 
latitudes; some days gales are howling, sometimes the sea is smooth as glass, so Tiger Blue moves around between Komodo, Sumba, the Banda Sea and Papua to take best advantage of the seasons at their best. Spring is the season for Raja Ampat.

It can still rain at any time, and often does 
but only in short sharp bursts; in between are 
long days of tropical sunshine and star-filled moonlit nights.

As night falls, lazy lightening fills the horizons, but travelling at the speed of light with nothing in its way, it could be as far away as in Borneo. I decide to risk it and sleep on deck under the dark stars.

First stop the next morning is Sawinggrai village on Palau Gam, one of the best places left to catch a glimpse of the “burung Cenderawasih” or bird of Paradise. The magnificent colourful plumes of these exotic birds have been keenly sought by local tribes and foreign explorers for centuries. This remote village is the last permanent habitation we will see until our return.

At Air Borek, we anchor off shore so the snorkelers among us can hover on the surface and look down on the extraordinary sight of the divers below us being dwarfed by dozens of giant manta rays that regularly congregate here to clean themselves on their favourite sub marine rocks. After lunch on the move, we anchor again and divide into groups at Palau Yanggelo, a sheltered bay surrounded by an amphitheatre of tropical forest that sparkles with an almost psychedelic vibrancy in the strong sunlight.

Some head off to the 
reef to dive into the strange world of the bearded 
Wobbegong sharks, while the rest of us stay in the bay to kayak, snorkel and water ski. The divers return just in time to see the spectacle of a sperm whale blowing a waterspout as it swims right past Tiger Blue.

The next morning everyone is up on deck at dawn to experience one of 
the highlights of the 
trip: sailing into the sheltered lagoons of Pulau Wayag surrounded by towering islands of 
dramatic limestone pinnacle mountains dotted like dragon’s teeth among the calm waters. It was 
like entering a Chinese scroll painting.

As none of the islands have fresh water, no 
one has ever lived here, and now it’s a designated marine park. No one can even fish here, and as it’s not even a famous dive site few people ever come here. Just being there feels like an immense privilege. At sunset the crew build a fire on one of the many white sand beaches and serve us cocktails from a makeshift bar. That night, we all sleep very well, moored in the tranquillity of the bay.

By contrast, the water just off the Pai Islands is decidedly choppy. These are the most northern and remote dots on any map of Raja Ampat, uninhabited except for a group of rotating wardens who man the post created by Conservation International to protect one of the most important Hawksbill turtle nesting sites in the world.

As not a single boat had stopped here for many months, they seem very pleased to see us, as do the giant turtles. Even before we go ashore, several of them surface all around the boat and seem to wave at us with their flippers. They soon swim off when we get into the water; it was still a wonderful and rare encounter with them. Getting ashore is hard work in the big swell so we soon head back to the calm and privacy of Wayag for the rest of the day then sail through the night on to Selat Kabui.

In 1869, Alfred Russel Wallace, the British naturalist, explorer and contemporary of Darwin, published a ground breaking journal The Malay Archipelago, based on his exploration of this area. One of his discoveries while searching for birds of paradise in 1860 was 
a tiny “river-like” sea straight between Gam Island and Waigeo.

We follow his route, but since it is too narrow and dangerous to navigate with Tiger Blue, we go in the Zodiacs. It was like entering another world. A long deep ravine full of bird song and dense tropical foliage tumbling down sheer slopes into crystal clear water leads to a vast open bay full of rocky islets. It feels like we are real adventures discovering a lost world.

Our last stop is a sleepy lagoon in a bay of the Pef Islands; here we begin to see signs of civilisation once again. As we approach, there appear distant pearl farms on the shoreline, then a dive resort and soon after we stop, several sea canoes from neighbouring kampongs come alongside to see who we were.

Inevitably, our time eventually runs out and the shoreline of Papua beckoned so we raise the main sail, lash the mast and head back to civilisation. The whole trip had only been five days, yet it felt like five weeks without the distraction and stress of connectivity.

As soon as the signal was in range the emails came flooding in but they were still ignored by most of us, reluctant to admit that such an epic adventure had to end. We still had one more treat left.

The cook, captain and crew needed to go ashore to stock up in the markets of Sarong for the next voyage, so we went with them to buy our own supplies of spices, coffee and batiks to take home.

Long after these expired, the memory of this trip would endure as one of the fondest of all my travels and by far the easiest one to pack for as I realised at the end of it, I had hardly used any of the clothes in my suitcase.

wknd@khaleejtimes.com