They don't see many visitors in the village of Kenanga on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa and the local headmaster has cancelled school for the day in honour of our visit.
When our Zodiac crunches on to the sand at the front of the village, wide-eyed children sit in clusters on the sand, whispering to one another behind their hands. The local mayor makes a speech and then we're welcomed in the age-old tradition of the island, with a dance.
Half a dozen young women perform shyly, each face a cinnamon oval within the white of a jilbab, the Muslim headscarf. When they finish, two of the older men take to the stage to circle one another in a silat dance, posing on one leg and then rushing together in mock combat. They're graceful as cats, and although they grin, when they grapple the knots of their muscles ball.
Afterwards we stroll around the village, along sandy lanes where stilt houses are shaded by mango and jackfruit trees, while small boys feed us with fruit from the lilly pillies.
One of our crew gets a haircut from the local barber and a woman in our group is adopted by a small child who steers her around, hand-in-hand. When we reboard the Zodiacs to return to the ship the children are piling into the water, turning somersaults, shrieking and high-fiving us. Smiles all round. It's day seven of our cruise, and every day has brought something special.
"Hands up everyone who's on board Orion for the first time," asks Tracy Greiner, the ship's hotel manager, on our first evening.
About a third of the audience raise hands. She counts off, "Second? Third?" and each time a few hands rise. Not until she reaches 13 do Jerry and Jill, the last of the 76 passengers on board, respond.
Orion has been in service in these waters since only 2005. While loyal clients who are prepared to sail aboard her several times a year are a tribute to its performance, it also creates a problem for her owners, who must constantly seek out fresh itineraries for customers who demand novelty.
So we are pioneering the nine-night Spice Island Adventure, a new route for Orion Expedition Cruises. From Darwin we sail north-west to the island of Kisar, which sits just above East Timor, then turn east on a zig-zagging course through the islands of the Indonesian Archipelago towards Bali.
If you're looking to cruise somewhere far from the ordinary, this is a perfect choice. These are islands that tantalised the imaginations of renaissance Europe, the source of nutmeg, cloves and mace that were the goal of Vasco da Gama, Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand Magellan. Spices were the 16th century equivalent of the cocaine trade. The risks were colossal, but a single cargo landed on the docks of Lisbon, London or Rotterdam would make its owner rich.
The biodiversity needle goes right off the scale in these islands. Indonesia has more mammals, birds, amphibians and plant species than any comparable landmass. About 17 000 of its 30 000 plant species are found nowhere else.
The region we're travelling is a transition zone where the big mammals of Asia end at the Wallace Line, named after the naturalist Alfred Wallace, the first to outline the mechanics of evolutionary divergence that became Darwin's theory of natural selection.
As well as its extraordinary stew of plant and animal life, this is the Shakin' Stevens of world geography, the most trembly part of the globe.
We're cruising along the Rim of Fire, a giant, earthquake-prone arc of geological instability that is home to three-quarters of the world's volcanoes.
One night we are summoned on deck to watch a volcano erupting on the island of Liran. A ribbon of fire trickles down its flanks, flaring and dying against an ink sky. We nose in until we're about a kilometre offshore, close enough to identify several separate vents.
The effusive David Scott Silverberg, our on-board conservation geographer, leaps about the deck, whirling his arms in giant arcs as he explains to us the principle of subduction. The Indo-Australian tectonic plate on which Australia sits is moving northward, diving beneath the Eurasian plate where it melts deep underground. What we're watching is an ancient piece of what was once Australia bubbling to the surface as molten lava.
Our voyage is ballasted with scientific erudition. As well as Silverberg, whose areas of specialisation encompass geology, geomorphology, oceanography, conservation biology and tectonics, we are travelling with a marine biologist and two naturalists, each of whom gives lectures.
We arrive at Komodo early one morning, anchoring in the flooded cone of a drowned volcano beneath brooding hills that grope into a pink sky.
After breakfast we go ashore, shepherded together on the beach by rangers armed with forked sticks. It doesn't seem much protection against the world's largest lizard, capable of bringing down a swift deer or even a human, but off we go, through a forest of tamarind, kapok, palm and jarak trees.
We reach a clearing by a waterhole and there they are, three lounging lizards, four metres long and armoured from nose to tail, testing the air with forked tongues. Most surprising of all are the Timor deer, grazing just metres away from their only predator, but the dragons need to eat only once a month and the deer obviously know when they're on the hunt.
After lunch back on Orion we spend the afternoon at Pink Beach, one of three snorkelling spots along our route.
It's gorgeous. The sand is formed from crushed organ pipe coral, which gives the beach its rosy tint. Below, the water is even better. There are hard corals and octocorals, gorgonians, clownfish, parrotfish, moorish idols, angelfish and wrasse.
Everyone sees something special - an octopus or a sea turtle or a snake - and there are some pinkish faces around the dinner table that evening.
The island of Sumba is prime retail territory. We step ashore at a beach and flapping in the breeze are dozens of the ikat cloths for which the island is famous, decorated with symmetrical patterns in the soft blues and ochre reds of plant dyes.
There's more - antique necklaces of glass beads from China, carved wooden boxes, murderous looking kris knives, carved shells and betel nut holders crafted from deerhorn.
It's a treasure chest before the collectors have got to it, and only a few walk away empty-handed.
Our voyage is also a journey through time, from thatch to timber to reinforced concrete, and from animist beliefs that lie just below a veneer of Christianity or Islam to the souped up spa culture that is modern Bali.
At the island of Alor we sail into a narrowing inlet where smoke rises against a curtain of blue hills.
From the quay we head inland past mango trees, cassava plots, cashew trees, banana and coconut palms and up a steep hill to Takpala village where silent men stand in wait with bows and arrows and war shields.
Women assemble from the shadows and they begin the cakalele, originally a war dance but now a dance of welcome.
The women form an inward-facing circle with arms linked behind their backs and move in a two-step, punctuated by the jingling of the brass bracelets around their ankles.
They dance to the rhythm of bronze moko drums, which originally came from Java or Vietnam. Moko drums are occasionally unearthed on Alor, which feeds the local belief that they have a supernatural origin.
A moko drum is the traditional bride price, which presents a problem since there are far more would-be Romeos than there are drums, but despite this impediment the island is well populated with small children.
For a ship that carries a maximum of 108 passengers, the Orion is lavishly endowed. There's a spa, beauty therapists, a boutique, lecture theatre, two inside restaurants and one on deck, two bars and a library. Cabins come in three styles, ascending in size and opulence as they rise from deck three to five, but even the most modest are large and luxurious with satellite Internet hook-ups, oodles of storage space, lots of wood veneer and touches of nautical brass.
But the Orion is not just a show pony. German-built and 103 metres long, she's equally at home nudging through pack ice as she is with flying fish leaping from her bow.
Equipped with retractable fin stabilisers for smooth sailing, bow and stern thrusters for manoeuvrability and armoured against the elements, the Orion is to expeditionary cruising what Usain Bolt is to the 100-metre sprint. If you want to cruise far from the ordinary with style, luxury and smiling room service, no other vessel comes close.
However, there's a serious problem with the suites. There are too many mirrors. Unless I walk around blindfolded, I catch sight of myself in profile, bending over in ungainly poses as I dress, and it's not a pretty sight.
The fault lies squarely with chef Lothar Greiner. The food is sensational. There are fresh croissants, eggs Benedict and smoked salmon for breakfast, fish salads, ice cream made on board and a decent cheese platter for lunch, a proper afternoon tea and espresso any time I feel like one. Is it any wonder I am overflowing?
It's all over at Bali, but not quite. As we're coming into the harbour at Benoa, there's a bang and Orion gives a mighty lurch, as if she's just been whacked by a giant fist. After we berth the captain announces over the PA system that we've been hit by an earthquake, measuring 5.6 on the Richter scale.
"I thought we'd run aground," he tells me, as I'm about to disembark. The Ring of Fire has just added a postscript.
- For more information contact www.orionexpeditions.com