Spice Islands

Imagine a place where the sun shines warm on your face and you can hear the gentle shush of waves on the sand. I smell like yummy cookies baking and cozy mornings. Can you guess who I am? I am a happy group of islands where very special trees grow. For a long, long time, I was the only place in the whole wide world with these trees. On my branches grow little treasures that smell so good. They are called cloves and nutmeg. I am the Spice Islands.

My spices smell so sweet and wonderful that people from far, far away wanted to find me. In the early 1500s, brave sailors got into big wooden ships to start their adventure. It was a very long journey across the big blue ocean. One famous trip finally reached my shores in the year 1521. The sailors were so happy to see me. They carefully filled their ships with my sweet-smelling spices to take back to their homes. Later, in the 1600s, more people came from a country called the Netherlands because they wanted to be in charge of all my wonderful spices.

Today, my special spice trees have traveled and now they grow in other sunny places around the world. But I will always be the very first home of cloves and nutmeg. People still visit me in the country of Indonesia to see my green forests and sparkling blue water. They come to see where the wonderful smells of yummy spices began their big journey across the world. Every time you smell a sweet spice in a pie or a cookie, it’s like a little hello from me, the Spice Islands, sharing my treasures with you.