Halmahera

Halmahera, formerly known as Jilolo, is the largest of the Maluku Islands. The island is part of the North Maluku province of Indonesia, the capital of the province is Sofifi and is located on the island's west coast. It is also the largest island in Indonesia outside the five main islands.

Naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace visited Halmahera, described in his 1869 book The Malay Archipelago. It was in February 1858, on the island of Ternate (or perhaps while on Halmahera itself), between bouts of fever (probably malaria), that Wallace came up with the idea of ​​natural selection through the survival of the fittest.

Wallace wrote down his ideas (hallucinations) over the next few days and sent the historic letter to Charles Darwin. Darwin who later dared to publish the same theories he had pondered after visiting the Galapagos and later got all the credit for the evolution and adaptation of species and his theory of evolution by natural selection. Wallace is big in the Moluccas and you can find pictures on walls and many bear his name to this day. It is from him that the Wallacea line gets its name. An imaginary line that divides Indonesia into two parts that species rarely crossed and thus developed differently.

With its large area and many islands in the North Moluccas, you are offered fantastic or even exceptional diving. Many species both on land and in the sea are only found here and have not made it further west to Sulawesi or east to Papua Barat.
Land-based diving in the North Moluccas is still in its infancy and there are only a few dive resorts here yet. It is also far to the nearest decompression chamber which you should take into account.

The southeast side of Halmahera has the opposite season to the rest of Indonesia and it is often windy and rainy May - September. Otherwise, the region has largely the same season as the rest of Indonesia with April - November as its peak months.