The brief version is that this morning we attended talks and this afternoon we visited a village.
To flesh that out a bit, we had breakfast which looks to be a buffet each day. Not hugely extensive but decent, and again at the shared tables so it takes a bit of energy to make polite conversation. After that there was a moderately interesting talk on biogeography, essentially how things change (or fail) on islands. Then we had a tour of the of the bridge, which was very interesting. Most everything is contained in a few big screens, there are small kind-of-joysticks for each propeller, and everything is carefully monitored.
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| Bridge |
After lunch we reached the island of Yamdena in the Tanimbar region and went ashore at the main town, Suamlaki. The ship has large aluminium flat-bottomed tenders and it turns out there is a big boat lift running the whole width of the stern, so you can board the tender before it’s lowered into the water. Once ashore we filed into a group of smallish buses which took us the hour and a half to the village of Sangliat Dol. The ride was boring but got us past the rain.
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| Suamlaki |
The village is significant because of the it’s megalithic (the Maluku culture still uses big stone structures on tombs) and senior positions are structured around traditional seafaring roles symbolised by their stone boat in the village. There was a brief speech, lots of photos and hanging around, and a long drive back to Suamlaki.
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| Stone Boat |
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