We are coming to the end of our stay in Bandanaira which has been a great learning and cultural experience for us. Our 10 day stay here has been busy but restful as well, with time for some reading and pottering about on the boat ,as well as, sightseeing.. We particularly enjoyed our trip to Banda Besar a 15 minute boat ride form here, to tour a nutmeg plantation and visit some fortified ruins built during the Dutch occupation of the islands. We saw the oldest nutmeg tree, 300 years old which is still producing some fruit and the clove tree which produces a flower, which when dried, is what we buy as whole cloves in the supermarkets. We passed many houses that had big sheets lying on the ground outside in the sun, covered in cloves, in various states of the drying process. They start off as yellow/ red in colour then when fully dried are black as we would recognise them. The people of Bandanaira are predominantly Muslim so there are many times throughout the day when music(call to prayer) is played through loudspeakers all over the island which lends an exotic flavour to the experience of being here. It is also the reason why a slab of beer is twice the price of that at home! Yesterday Bern climbed the volcano a challenging climb up a narrow track to an elevation of 600 metres! For some reason the soles of his walking boots disintegrated on the way up, so he had to return to the dinghy, retrieve his boat shoes and start the climb again. Needless to say, his knees are a bit tender today! We have dined out at one of the better restaurants and enjoyed tasting a few of the local dishes, the grilled eggplant and peanut sauce was very delicious as was the green papaya salad. This morning we checked out with the Harbour Master as tomorrow morning we sail 10nm to Run (roon) Island where there are supposed to be some historical British sites and some good snorkelling. We will be sailing with three other boats so will have company. After the overnight stopover we will sail 370nm further west to Wakatobi which is the next stopover for the Sail Indonesia Rally. We will then catch up with the other boats who chose to go onto Ambon instead of staying here longer as we did.