Royal Treatment
THE NEWEST IT DESTINATION for luxury travel is Indonesia’s Raja Ampat archipelago, a group of more than 1,500 islands off the tip of West Papua. Widely known as “the last paradise”, it’s one of the few places on Earth teeming with wildlife, both above and below water, that remains untouched by mass tourism.
Above water, Raja scenery with its emerald green waters, white sand beaches and conical karst islands scattered across the sea. Below, as part of the Coral Triangle spanning Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste and the Solomon Islands, it boasts the richest marine biodiversity on earth. In fact, a record-breaking 283 species were recorded in a single dive at Cape Kri, and some dive sites are so “fishy” that they are jokingly referred to by the locals as fish soup.
