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Whenever we arrive in a new country we purchase a local SIM card for our phones. Upon arrival in Tual, Indonesia we bought a SIM card from Telkomsel, the largest mobile carrier in Indonesia with great coverage all over the country. For about 1,500,000 rupiah (about US$10) we got a SIM card and 8GB of data usage for 30 days. Note, this does not include any credit for phone calls or SMS...

Just outside the boundaries of Komodo National Park is Pulau Sabayor where most of the live-aboard dive boats out of Labuan Bajo come to do the checkout dive for their guests. There's also a nice dive resort, Komodo Resort and Diving Club close by where we had a nice dinner one night. The snorkeling and diving are excellent and the water temperature is perfect for just wearing a dive...

Once again, we're leaving a place we really love but we need to keep moving west and our next stop will be at Labuan Bajo which is the city at the entrance to Komodo National Park (yep, the big dragons!). At 4 degrees south of the equator, there is not that much wind so we motored for most of the way and had to keep a watchful eye out for fishing nets. The passage had some moments of...

The hits just keep on comin'... Every anchorage just gets more beautiful here in Indonesia! Although we miss the charm and local community of Banda Naira the scenery here is outstanding with at least 3-4 volcanos as well as stunning snorkeling. Perhaps the best we've had in a very long time. The coral is pristine, tons of fish of all kinds and completely different than what we found...

Daniele and Thomas climbed to the top of the volcano. It was a 640 meter trek straight up the mountainside along an almost vertical rut that the locals had assured was the official trail. They came back sweat-soaked, muddied, scuffed and bruised, but grinning at their accomplishment. “It’s amazing.” They reported. “You look down and you see everything.”

It's hard to leave Banda Naira (The Nutmeg Island) as we've had such a wonderful time here but, it's time to carry on to the west and make progress toward our end-of-season goal of arriving in Langkawi, Malaysia. Indonesia is a huge country and the distances much greater than you think. The passage to our next stop-over is about 450nm and we'll take a couple of days to get there. Part...

Here we are anchored off a volcano that is still active. On the way past it yesterday we noted a fairly recent outflow of lava from the side leading into the sea. In fact, on the way to our anchorage we had to pass through a narrow gap between the coral on the right and the underwater lava flow on the left. We are anchored in sand at about 10 meters with lots of room for swinging and...

Off to new places on our way (eventually) to Komodo and Bali. For now we went with the wind and did a nice overnight (30 hour) passage to the Banda Islands where we'll spend a few days relaxing (of course!) and checking out the local scene. Banderia is the island where the spice Nutmeg came from originally (the only place in the world). Other locations that have it now took original...