As the Rainbow Warrior sweeps into town, here on the other side of the planet the Esperanza is sailing through the warm waters of the old Spice Islands. We left Manokwari on Monday and are currently en route to Jakarta, slipping past bewitchingly exotic names such as the Ceram Sea, Buru Island, the Halmahera Sea, Selat Sagewin, the Banda Sea... I could go on.

If you're trying to place these exotic names, you could do worse than download the Google Earth layer which is tracking the progress of the Esperanza through Indonesia (you'll need to install Google Earth first, of course, but there's a plain map version below). I'll be posting highlights from the tour there, and it will update automatically so check it often for the latest stories, videos and other titbits from our expedition.

Oh, and we saw whales yesterday.

I've been playing around with Google Earth's KML spreadsheet as we're thinking of ideas we can contribute from the UK office to the Greenpeace layer in the Global Awareness section (recently added: highlights of our marine work), and I was checking out some of the showcased examples of good visual mapping done by other organisations. Amongst them, I came across this little beauty which visually represents the differing rates of deforestation around the world and it's quite, quite brilliant.

Gordon Brown has revealed his latest wheeze to try and convince us that underneath that gruff capitalist exterior there beats a heart of purest green. Together with the Met Office, the government has released a Google Earth layer showing the effects of climate change (download Google Earth, then get the layer).

Google Earth launches a new layer

Images have a way of penetrating the mind and conveying information more immediately and powerfully than reams of words and, as far as images of our planet go, they don't come much more powerful than Google Earth.

The application - which has already done its fair share of enabling people to use technology for the good of the planet - has launched a new Outreach programme, encouraging us at Greenpeace and other organisations to use the application to spread global awareness.