Hunting Dragons

 

Our first port stop on this cruise is to Komodo Island, Indonesia as in the home of the Komodo Dragon.  This island is the only place in the world you will find them.  We booked an excursion with 18 other people that took us to see the dragons and then to the pink beach on the island.  This is a small place; there is a small town on the other side of the island, but most if not all of the island is a national park.  As such, entry is closely controlled and if you did not have a prebooked tour, you could not get off the ship!

The tour starts right at the end of the dock where we find our tour guide.  In addition to the guy from the tour company, we have 2 park rangers.  The rangers each carry a long stick with a forked pointy area at the end which is our protection against the dragons.  Before we get off the beach and onto the trail, we see a dragon wandering by, we are told it is a juvenile.  Um these dragons must be big then cause that thing is heftier than an alligator or crocodile!  

Our ranger uses the two prong stick near the dragon's eyes to deter him from approaching

Our ship in the background

As we start we are warned that this is mating season and the dragons may be hard to find.  Seems they like privacy while they mate.  We get to an opening and there is a dragon up off to the right.  Our guide says this is the watering hole and thus a good place to find dragons.  The watering hole is more like a large puddle, but hey if the dragons are happy with it then its fine.  We watch this dragon for a few minutes and then another appears near to him in the brush.  We move around as instructed by our guide (keep 5 -6 meters away).  Then behind us a couple more appear as do more humans.  We are all watching them and ourselves.  The park ranger offers to take pictures of people behind one of the dragons so of course we took him up on the offer.

They drew a line in the sand to indicate how far back we needed to stay

Iridescent colors in the scales

Click here to watch a short video of this dragon as he turns to go towards the photographer

After a while, our guide says it is time to move on.  As we are walking along he points out an old nest the mother komodo would have used to place her eggs in (the nest is built by a local bird not the komodo).  Then he stops; just stops in the middle of the trail.  A few feet ahead of him is a good size log at the end  of the trail.  No that is a log with a komodo dragon sunning or resting on it.  Happily, the head is away from the trail.  Oh wait, we aren't done here yet there is another dragon on the opposite side of the trail.  Neither of these two are as big as the big one we saw at the watering hole, but...  After talking with another ranger they have us walk past them on the trail one by one with one of their sticks nearby.

The Den is used in the wet slightly cooler time of year, nest only when eggs are laid

Bottom right is a dragon's favorite dinner which they stealthily wait to come too close

As we continue on, he points out some local wildlife such as some snails climbing up a tree and some komodo scat, but the best part of the walk or trek as they say around here is done.  Except that now you have to make it through the gauntlet of locals selling trinkets.

Butterflies

Now our group is ready for the pink sand beach.  Jeff said they learned a couple of days ago that one boat would take us to the pink beach area but we would have to transfer to a smaller boat to get to the beach since the bigger one might scrape the coral.  Umm ok.  We are walking down the pier and I am not seeing any boat that I would normally choose to hop on.  Well, I am getting on a style of boat I have seen here in Asia before. The captain says people should step over the railing on the top of the boat.  This is my speed - I feel like I am climbing over the safety ropes on our old sailboat, so I hop right on and walk to the back covered area.  The floor is covered in mats and Jeff gets a bean bag chair while others join us then we are off.  It looks like rain and does rain lightly, so I am happy for the covering.  We get to the pink beach area and see that it is a small, protected cove, but first we will eat lunch.  They had quite the spread for us.    

Pink color is from coral reef adjacent to the beach

 I let Jeff snorkel first and he says it is good come on in.  Get in and I snorkel some with Jeff, but I am not comfortable today and my mask is kind of fogging up so I snorkel for 20 minutes or so and then set Jeff free to go more.  The coral is nice and alive, and I did see some fish, but I just can't get comfortable and enjoy it.  There are some others just enjoying the beach, so I take the snorkel gear off and grab a towel.  While I am up doing that another guest asks our guide if we should be worried about the bore that has just wandered nearby.  I forget Jeff's phone is in the backpack so no picture, but the other guest did take one and shared it.  Later on the way back we are all talking about it and Jeff thinks I am crazy till the guy shares the photo.

A running joke is that Jeff tries to kill me on some things well this time after the fact our whole group was laughing about how we missed death.  We get back to the pier all laughing as we pass our ship just take us there.  In hindsight life would have been much easier if they had.  We are at the pier; the tide is most definitely out.  We are looking at each other like how the heck are we getting off this boat. I should add that probably 2/3s of this group is definitely older than Jeff and me.    There are rubber ledge pieces attached to the pier which are probably meant to be bumpers but our guide steps from the ship edge to one of them and then scampers up on the pier.  Oh, please don't tell me you expect me to do that!?  We stand on the edge of the boat on its railing and then step up to the pier with the help of several hands.  In fact, I had just started to lift my leg when they all grabbed me and delicately put me back on dry land.  Adventure over, right?  

Wrong.  Cruise ships always aim for it to be easy to get on and off the tenders.  Notice I said aim this is not one of those times.  The ship is obviously waiting for our group because the crew member greeting us is checking off cabin numbers even though the last tender was not scheduled for another hour.  There are steps here (probably the only ones on the pier), but the boat entry is much lower than the last step as in even bigger than a big Indonesian step.  I get to the bottom, and I am like WHAT??  Well, I and some others grabbed the hands of the 2 guys at the doorway and jumped onto the ship.  I saw a couple of my compatriots sit on the bottom step and then into the boat. Jeff and I laughed about our experiences later at dinner.  The next morning Jeff had the assignment to get a load of laundry to the launderette when it opens and sees a couple of others from our excursion who laughed about skirting death.  So, this time Jeff not only tried to kill me. but himself too!