Tags
Hoga Island, Indonesia, photography, southeast asia, Sulawesi Tanggara, travel, travelogue, Tukang Besi Archipelago, underwater, underwater camera, venomous sea snake, Wakatobi
There are over 17,000 islands in Indonesia, so pinning anything down is a little complicated.
So, Hoga Island is part of the Wakatobi island group, a group of islands in the larger Tukang besi Archipelago off of Buton Island in the Sulawesi Tenggara. The name Wakatobi comes from combining the names of the 4 largest islands in the group, Wangi-Wangi, Kaledupa, Binongko and Tomia. And you’ve seen me use the word Tenggara before. It’s Malaysian / Indonesian for southeast. So, Sulawesi Tenggara means the area on the southeastern side of Sulawesi. And Tukang besi is Indonesian for iron-worker or blacksmith.
There are two origin stories as to why this is the blacksmiths’ archipelago. One, a Dutch visitor named Hoger visited Binongko Island and saw people making iron tools (the idea of working a roaring fire in this heat and humidity makes me want to faint), so he called the area Toekang Besi Eilanden. Two, that the name refers to Tulukabesi, the king of Hitu (in Maluku), who took up arms to oppose the Netherlands East India Company. The locals suffered greatly here during the spices wars in 1800’s. The Dutch had little patience with anyone who didn’t agree with their agenda of monopolizing and enslaving the region. And even if you were an obedient slave, they might turn their cannons on you or decide that you needed to be slaughtered to send a message to someone less obedient. (The Dutch have formally apologized in recent years.) I would recommend a book that I’m about halfway through called Nathaniel’s Nutmeg: How One Man’s Courage Changed the Course of History by Giles Milton, that talks about the spice war history.
What Wakatobi is known for today is diving. There’s at least one very high end diving resort and a number of smaller ones. Unfortunately the local airline has stopped service to Wakatobi. The high end resort is still flying customers in via private plane, but the smaller resorts and other local businesses are out of luck. And what with the troubles, the pandemic, no maintenance was done on many of the tourist structures, so they’ve completely rotted away. The beaches are covered in hermit crabs sculling over mounts of plastic trash that washed in from the ocean.
They started us on foot toward a village, telling us that it was 20 minutes, just beyond the pier. So, we got to the pier and asked again, and the natives said, 20 minutes from this point, we’re almost there. So, we hiked another 30 minutes along the beach, and the staff said, shouldn’t we be headed into the trees, because the village isn’t on the beach? So, we head into the vegetation, wander around a bit following the guides, pop back out on the beach about 20 minutes later and ask the guides, how far to the village? And they said 30 minutes, tops. This is where me and a couple other people said, it’s been lovely hiking in the heat, but we want to go back and snorkel, so we turned back. One of our group did press on and said, it was another hour and a half before the village. Which meant that it was 2 and half hours, 3 hours back, so they totally missed the snorkeling.
Which was a shame. Because it was good snorkeling. Warm water and, yes, my underwater camera was working. It was very shallow, but when you got out there, it was a nice drop off filled with healthy coral and fish. The biologist kept reminding us to look for seahorses in the shallow sea grass, but I didn’t see any.
And while I was bobbing along, taking pictures, half heartedly chasing after the fish who kept their distance, I looked down and said, wait a minute, am I swimming with a venomous sea snake? And, yes, I had that verified later with the biologist. It was a banded sea krait, but they said, I probably shouldn’t worry, they’ve very chill and won’t bother you if you don’t bother them.
Not bothering the wildlife is my middle name. A couple times the travel medicine doctors have lectured me about not petting anything and what to do if I get bitten by a wild animal. And I’m all, no, no, no, I do not touch the wildlife.