Buru Island, Indonesia
Oct 2022
Having crossed the Banda Sea over night, I had another self-inflicted early morning, but this time even earlier due to the time change 🤔. It was a beautiful morning as we travelled towards Buru Island as the sun rose from behind it. Buru Island lies between the Banda Sea and the Pacific Ocean and is the third largest island Maluku Island group. It is not a big island, at 130km long and 90km wide, but it soars from the sea to 2,700m at its highest point. Around 210,000 people live here.
As well as being between two seas, Buru is located right on the boundary between the biogeographic zones and its flora and fauna is quite unique – there are 4 endemic mammal species, 14 endemic birds and a number of endemic butterflies (not sure if we will actually see any of these lol).
To look at the island today, you can never imagine the tragic past that Buru has had. Between 1969 and 1979, Buru was the site of Indonesia’s most infamous prison camp, where approximately 12,000 political prisoners (mostly academics, artists, teachers, journalists) were held without formal charge or trial. They were forced to do hard labour without adequate food or clothing and hundreds died.
We were the first expedition ship to visit Pasir Putih, and I believe even Buru Island and as such it appeared to be a pretty big occasion. The ship was greeted by officials in their small ‘official’ boat with a flag and a video camera recording the event – maybe we made the local news lol. There were also a number of locals coming out in their small boats to look at the odd foreigners. I was pleasantly surprised to see them all taking photos of themselves with the ship behind (I did try to photo bomb a few of them lol).
Despite the momentous occasion, the plan for the day all seemed a bit disorganised. There would be nature walks, there might be snorkeling, they did not know till our local guide went over for a reccie – had they not done this before they put the island on the itinerary?? 🤔 Because of this disorganisation, those of us who chose to go on the nature walks, missed the grand welcome which apparently consisted of 1000 villagers from 6 villages, including the Chief of the Regency who had apparently travelled for 6 hours to greet us. There was local food and dancing and it sounded like a wonderful occasion. It was the kind of event that everyone should have had the opportunity to experience especially given everything we are missing due to the delays! To say I was disappointed is a bit of an understatement.
My disappointment at the disorganisation could not take away the beauty of the island, it was stunning, beautiful turquoise water lapping upon small palm covered beaches, leading up to lush rolling hills and spectacular jungle covered mountains behind. We were dropped off on land and after a short scramble up a bush covered incline, we made it to an old logging road where we proceeded to wander, stopping to spot the local wildlife.
We spotted Red cheeked parrots, black eagles, sunbirds, red lorikeets along with some very cool spiders and insects (describing them as cool is a matter of opinion I guess lol). It was an easy walk but so very hot (it had already been 31C at 8am!).
Unfortunately, we then had to wait over an hour on a small gravel beach area to be picked up by the zodiacs! Thankfully the area turned out to be a washing area for the locals – washing the bottom of their boats as well as their clothes so it was interesting to watch their techniques. It was not long before other locals turned up to take selfies with us – now pretty much everyone has smart phones, I love that they want to take our photos, and more importantly selfies with us.
When we finally got picked up, we got a chance for a short snorkel from the beach where the grand welcome was held. It was a nice snorkel, but it was low tide again, and there was still a rather large crowd of locals on the beach and in boats so was a little embarrassing having to wade out in front of all the spectators lol. They were definitely as fascinated with us as we were with them. They did not know much English, but they knew ‘selfie’ 😂
The afternoon was spent at sea, with a great lecture from guest lecturer, Neil Nightingale and another from our resident historian. His lecture was cut a little short as the call went out that there were sperm whales in the distance. There was great excitement around the ship, and we made a short detour to get closer to the pod of sperm whales that had been spotted.
Of course, I was out on deck trying to get the perfect photos (another failure lol) and from whales I moved on to trying to photograph the birds – today there were more boobies as well as a large flock of red-necked phalaropes (over 700 of them apparently).
It was a lovely end to the day
Cockneykiwi takes flight 