{"id":2988,"date":"2012-06-20T08:00:42","date_gmt":"2012-06-20T07:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/petitesbullesdailleurs.fr\/petitesbullesdailleurs\/?p=2988"},"modified":"2019-02-01T11:51:48","modified_gmt":"2019-02-01T10:51:48","slug":"the-passage-raja-ampat-papua","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/petitesbullesdailleurs.fr\/en\/the-passage-raja-ampat-papua-20120620\/","title":{"rendered":"The passage"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here, cliffs covered with jungle strangle the sea. This is one of the mythical sites of Raja Ampat: The Passage.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In the wake of Sir Alfred Russel Wallace<\/h2>\n

West Papua, Indonesia. In the Raja Ampat archipelago, the islands of Gam and Waigeo almost touch each other. Their karst cliffs covered with jungle, one in front of the other, form a kind of canyon that winds in the sea, oriented east-west.<\/p>\n

The Passage is a spectacular and famous place. The British naturalist Sir Alfred Russel Wallace<\/a>who was looking for birds of paradise, is the first to have described it, in the 19th century, in his book The Malay Archipelago<\/em> (1869).<\/p>\n

Below is its route, on a map of the time, compared with a modern map. The Passage is at the red circle.<\/p>\n

\"Map<\/a>
Map of Raja Ampat. On the left, the road of Sir Russel Wallace in the nineteenth century.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Atmosphere dive<\/h2>\n

For divers, this is a very different site from the others. From the boat, you have the impression to navigate on a steep river. Once underwater, we still have this strange impression of diving in a river, because of the shallow depth, the proximity of the vegetation and the rock.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

At the same time, the underwater fauna is there. There are sponges, corals, tropical fish that have nothing to do with a river bed...<\/p>\n

Underwater, the atmosphere is strange, bewitching, between the bright colors of the gorgonians at the bottom of the gully and the green light coming from the surface, filtered by the foliage of the trees.<\/p>\n