Arrive and meet your leader at the airport on the island of Ternate by a seasoned tour operator and crew-members, who escort you to the port where you have your first view of the Ombak Putih. There enjoy some free time for you to settle into your cabin as well as meet the other passengers and crew-members while you enjoy an alfresco lunch together on the main deck of this beautiful, traditional pinisi. Your tour operator briefs you on all the activities of the cruise. The afternoon is for sightseeing in the city of Ternate, a vital spice-trading outlet, which has retained its commercial and political importance as the administrative center and main trading hub of the North Maluku province. Of the four historically powerful spice sultanates, Ternate is the only one where the institution of the sultanate has survived uninterrupted. Visit Fort Toluko built by the Portuguese, Fort Oranje built by the VOC (Dutch East India Company), and the ‘Kedaton,’ the palace of the Sultan of Ternate, with its rich collection of heirlooms. If you are lucky, be privileged enough to enjoy the presence of the Sultan and his family.

Today visit Tidore, another perfect volcanic-cone island rising from the tropical seas. Kiematabu (1730 meters) is extinct, but its slopes feature plantations of the graceful clove trees that were once found only upon this and a few adjacent islands. On your way around this scenic island of gaily painted village houses and tropical blooms, visit a blacksmith working an ancient design of piston-bellows to forge knives and machetes. Picturesque port Soa Siu is dominated by two strongholds: the Portuguese Fort Torre built in the 1570s, and Fort Tahula, established by the Spanish in 1610 to menace their Dutch rivals across the strait. They overlook the modern palace of the Sultan of Tidore, a one-time rival to Ternate’s sultan. A seashore monument marks the 1521 visit of Magellan’s battered fleet on the first circumnavigation of the world.

Wake at sunrise, and enjoy the picture-postcard view. Four perfect, brilliant-green volcanic-cone islands emerge from the sea in a straight line stretching south to north, parallel to the rugged, forested spine of the big island called Halmahera. They are Makian, Moti, Tidore and Ternate. Makian is dominated by volcanic Mount Kiebesi (1357 meters) towering over its palm-fringed, white-sand beaches and crystal clear waters. There are interesting expeditions ashore and good places to snorkel, and natural hot springs. Later cruise towards Payahe Bay on the mainland of Halmahera, which was another of the Spice Sultanates, formerly called Gilolo. Landfall is a remote beach full of outrigger fishing craft, for an easy afternoon trek towards a forest waterfall. Tonight cross the Equator.

Visit the first southern hemisphere anchorage off Bacan’s north shore, another seat of Indonesia’s historic spice sultanates. This island is just to the west of the large Moluccan island of Halmahera, a paradise for rare-bird watchers. After breakfast go exploring ashore at the village of Geti or its neighbor Goro-Goro, walking up a rainforest-clad river valley. Bacan is where Alfred Russel Wallace discovered the golden birdwing butterfly and the giant mason bee, Chalicodoma pluto. Keep a close watch for these and a host of species, some of them endemic, including parrots, cockatoos, lorikeets, hornbills, the elusive cuscus or a rare black macaque – the only monkey in Maluku. It’s the wrong side of the Wallace Line for monkeys - these ones were introduced from North Sulawesi.

Arrive at the Patinti Strait and Doworalamo, where you can visit a village of the famous sea gypsies, known in Eastern Indonesia as Sama-Bajo. Scattered widely through Southeast Asia, sea gypsies spent their entire lives from birth to death on their small sailboats called lipa-lipa. Now the modern world has pushed them ashore. Landless, their homes are always built on stilts over coral reefs or the tidal margins of remote islands such as this one. There are opportunities for swimming, snorkeling, and beach-combing before your ship takes a southerly course on an overnight passage across the Ceram Sea.

Today, your destination is Obi Latu Island, where mountains clad in forest and clove plantations plunge spectacularly into the sea. Go ashore to visit the village of Manatahan, whose people are migrant Butungese from Sulawesi Tenggara hundreds of miles to the west. Migration is not unusual in this island world where people are accustomed to moving by boat, and islands are sparsely populated or uninhabited. In past times the picturesque channels around Obi were dotted with the sails of local spice traders, Portuguese caravels, Spanish galleons, Dutch jachts and English pinnaces. Encounter friendly fishers and their outrigger dugouts, colorful timber island-trading craft, and sometimes little lambo sloops still trading under sail.

Today arrive at the mysterious island of Manipa which is said to have magical powers because the seafarers on the Portugese, Dutch and Japanese ships never landed here despite occupying all of the surrounding islands. Stroll through the Uwe township for lessons in village technology. Its gardens produce cashews, while the leaves of forest Melaleuca cajuputi are pot-distilled to make a volatile oil called kayu putihor cajeput. It’s famed throughout Indonesia as a universal panacea: cosmetic, antiseptic, insecticide, decongestant, analgesic, expectorant, anti-spasmodic, stimulant and tonic! View production of the traditional Moluccan food staple, sago, a nutritious flour washed from the fibrous trunk of the cycad-like sago palm. Sago can be baked into easily transportable cakes, while the palm also provides building timber and thatch. After an afternoon snorkeling, cruise on towards the Lease group (pronounced ‘Lay-ah-say’).

On Saparua land beside Dutch Fort Duurstede (1691), stormed in 1817 in a revolt led by Ambonese Kapitan Pattimura, a national hero and martyr. His story is told by vivid museum dioramas. Brightly painted bemo mini-buses take you to a morning market before you sail to nearby Nusalaut. Rarely visited by outsiders, this island is home to a Christian community after early missionaries planted their faith here at the same time that Islam was spreading through the archipelago. Visit the Eben-Haezer church founded in 1719. Nearby is the restored Dutch Fort Beverwyck, built from 1657 in a distinctive architectural style not yet encountered. A highlight here is a lunchtime feast of wonderful local dishes – freshly prepared by villager hosts from forest, garden and sea produce. It’s your once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to try papeda, the most famous and unusual of the many sago dishes.

Reach the renowned, remote Banda archipelago. Famous for natural beauty and cultural heritage, and their well-preserved remnants of an extraordinary history of imperialist rivalry, these islands are quite simply one of Indonesia’s highlights. Banda was originally the world’s only source of nutmeg and mace, valued for their rarity and high cost by aristocrats and elites. Today Banda’s quiet and charming ambiance belies a dramatic and often tragic history, including war, massacre, earthquake and eruption. This is a very special destination. Since conditions of wind and tide determine the order in which you visit various Banda islands, activities here can’t be assigned to a particular day. In the capital Bandaneira, on the biggest island, Neira, land near the elegant arches of Hotel Maulana – a little slice of Somerset Maugham. It’s a pleasant stroll through the quaint colonial outpost’s characterful streets, inspecting notable residences, a museum, churches, and a waterfront market. Brooding over all is the medieval-looking Fort Belgica, its five crumbling bastions now solidly rebuilt. The population is a handsome mix of Malay, Arab, Dutch and Melanesian. Just across the harbor is Banda’s perfect, jungle-clad volcanic cone Gunung Api (‘Fire Mountain’ – 640 meters). The fit and ambitious might make an early morning ascent up a challenging track to the top for stunning views. Or you can snorkel over the black lava stream of its last eruption.

Visit some of the other small islands of the Banda archipelago – Lonthoir, Ai, Run, Hatta – each of them with its own remnants of old plantations, Dutch cemeteries, and fortifications. The tiny outlying island of Run was the subject of an unbelievable real estate deal when in 1667, under the Treaty of Breda, it was ceded by the English to the Dutch in exchange for Manhattan. Yes, the Manhattan where New York stands. On the island of Ai you can visit Fort Revenge, built by the English before being captured by the Dutch. On Lonthoir you can enjoy the tranquil beauty of nutmeg groves, where the shapely fruit-bearing trees grow in the shelter of towering, gigantic kenari or native almond trees. You can observe the age-old technique of harvesting by hand, and can taste (and buy) baked goods, condiments and jams flavored with fresh mace, nutmeg or their fruit casing. Climb up to fortress Hollandia and go on to meet the last of the ‘perkeniers’ – the small-holder farmers who managed the plantations for the Dutch, on land parcels known as ‘perken’. Learn of more recent wars and eruptions that shook these lovely islands, and value even more their current peace and tranquility. Leaving Banda navigate through the Sonnegat (‘Sun’s gap’) between Neira and Gunung Api, escorted by kora-kora – the big Moluccan galleys used traditionally for ceremony and warfare, propelled by banks of warrior-oarsmen. 

Wake to find the Ombak Putih anchored in the harbor on the island of Ambon where the Portuguese arrived in 1513 to establish their regional authority. After breakfast, depending upon flight departure times, have a morning program to see the town, the markets, and explore Ambon’s history. Be transferred to the Ambon Airport for selected onward destinations.