The Raja Ampat Islands

Indonesia, with its 17.507 Islands, is the largest archipelagic State in the world. These beautiful Isles in Southeast Asia are a very desired and popular tourist destination.

This huge archipelago has two key features that attract tourism: 1) only 7.000 of the more than 17.000 islands are inhabited, so they give visitors a nature, both surface and underwater, almost untouched! 2) They are located on the equator so there is an ideal climate for tourism….

Today the Golden Scope shows you the Raja Ampat Islands, an archipelago made up of about 1.500 Indonesian islands that lies just at the point of encounter between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean; for this reason they are geographically part of the Australian continent while politically they are part of the Indonesian province of West Papua.

Looking at them from the plane, these islands, mainly mountainous, have their pads covered with lush vegetation ending in the turquoise sea that surrounds them… these colors enchant everyone… and eveyone falls in love with these islands…

The four main islands: Misool, Salawati, Batanta and Waigeo are surrounded by hundreds of atolls that seem to sprout magically from the crystal clear ocean waters. They are studied thoroughly by scientists only in the last decade, and they are home to the largest concentration of marine biodiversity of our planet.

The fauna of the land is very rich and includes more than 170 species of birds that inhabit the pristine forests; in which over 20 species of mammals also live, such as the cute spotted cuscus and possums.

The archipelago is the last earthly paradise submarine for lovers of diving around the world, because when you dive, you are “overwhelmed” by a variety of wonderful colors… variety of colors of the flora and fauna of these beautiful waters.

Raja Ampat in Indonesian language means “four kings” and this name originated from an ancient legend that tells of a woman who, in search of food in the forest, she found six dragon eggs. She kept them for several months in his home. One night he was awakened by some noise and she realized that five eggs had hatched, the sixth not hatched ever. Four males and a female were born. The four males became Kings of the four main islands while the female, by a floating on the sea shell, arrived to island Numfor. Raja Ampat Islands natives still adhere to this legend and built a House which symbolizes the dwelling in which the woman had guarded the eggs …

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