Today marks the 3 month anniversary of our travels. In this time we have visited many countries, including India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. We have seen nature and (plastic) pollution, rich and poor, the beautiful and ugly side of traveling. I could go on with the opposites that we have encountered, but there is always something similar that links everything together: human influence.
Molana is a hidden gem located south in the Moluccans, Indonesia. Other than a website there is not much is to be found about this island online, But after a few WhatsApps, and paying the deposit we surrendered ourselfs to the hope that it would all work out.
We were welcomed by a lady called Betty. She was a very interesting character, full of laughter, wearing a Chelsea shirt she was awaiting us at the airport. She didn’t have any front teeth left in her mouth, and Alessa and I wondered how she managed to bite in any kind of food, but yeah that’s not important to this story. They brought us to a small harbour village at the East side of Ambon.
From Bali we made our way to the Kei islands. It wasn’t an easy trip flying to Makassar, then Ambon and finally to Langgur. There are different ways of getting there, and one includes a boat but everyone we spoke to seemed to have come by plane. The trip became all the more challenging when I fell ill in Ambon with 39 degree fever. After checking in our luggage the sickness became worse, and we decided that we could not fly to the Kei islands before seeing a doctor. There are two hospitals on the Kei islands but they do not have the facilities to check your blood for tropical diseases.
When we tried to get the luggage back, the lady at the counter told us “don’t worry we have a doctor here at the airport”. I thought yes! Let’s go see her and figure out what I have but it was quite a bit more complicated in reality. I came there and it wasn’t a doctor we were going to see, but the quarantine officer. She saw me and blocked me from flying all together until I had my blood checked for dengue and malaria. Great, now we were at the airport but had to drive back to Ambon, get my blood checked and come back to the airport.
Kei Pirate Divers is the first and only divecentre on the Kei islands. To be honest I was surprised to find one here at all but Eva and Janosch opened their shop a little over a year ago.
They have transformed their home into a small divecentre with everything you need for a professional diving business. From the most professional compressor room, to state of the art equipment this German couple has established a centre for everyone’s diving needs.