Hi there, here is our Banda Sea trip report. We’ve just returned from an extraordinary 12 days exploring the region on board Pindito. This is the latest of five expeditions we’ve done since 2017.
Our trips are in the spirit of real expedition travel. We don’t have a completely fixed itinerary and, as a group, we make discoveries along the way. This is the secret to the most rewarding and memorable wildlife experiences.
Within hours of leaving port we’d already seen hundreds of rare Rough-toothed Dolphins and our first Blue Whales. Later we went on to have five Blue Whales feeding within sight of the vessel. There is nowhere else where you can quietly watch several of the largest animals that ever lived on Earth.
Then the unexpected happened, as is so often the case (we have never had any trip remotely like the last).
On this occasion, we found a dead Sperm Whale, which gave us the once-in-a-lifetime chance to watch huge oceanic Tiger Sharks feeding. Tiger Sharks are rare enough but to see something like this will likely never happen again in any of our lifetimes.
The rest of the trip we headed to our favourite spots and mixed up land, reef and deep ocean, to begin to get an understanding of what makes this region of planetary significance.
On this trip we had 12 guests, of which half snorkelled and half dived. We visited huge caves with prehistoric middens in Misool, swam on the most incredibly fishy coral reefs and saw 10 species of whale and dolphin.
Join me this February in Raja Ampat
I have limited spots still available for February/March 2023 in Raja Ampat. Read more of our trip reports from Pindito and enquire about joining one of my upcoming expeditions here.
