I had one goal today. See dragons. That was it. Anything else...bonus. Today was all about seeing dragons. Until I saw the boat we were taking. Then I had a second goal - no unplanned swimming. Spoiler alert...I met both goals.
The boat was...sketchy but I guess Ok? The first thing I noticed was that there were no life jackets. Which I guess was Ok because there are islands all around. Then I notice some of the railing is missing. Which I guess is OK because I'm not going to lean there.
We start out for the island of Rinca in Komodo national park. There are more dragons on Rinca and it is closer to Labuan Bajo, so most 1 day tours go there. It took about 2 hours to get there, so we arrived at about 9 am. Then it took about 30 minutes to sort out fees and tickets and other stuff. One thing to know about travel in Indonesia is that they nickel and dime you at all possible times. The tour cost paid to the booming company only covered the boat ride and lunch. When you get the you have to buy a ticket to the national park and pay a camera fee of you want to take pictures (often bigger than the ticket price). Then we had to pay for a guide. But we couldn't individually pay for a guide, we had to pay as a group. So they wanted a group of strangers to cobble exact change together to pay the guide fee. All this time, the guy from the boat is just standing around, not interpreting broken English or facilitating anything. And because a lot of the other tourists don't speak good English, they are confused, and the park office people are getting pissed that we won't just hand them our wallets when they demand fee after fee after fee. This is not a komodo phenomenon, it is an Indonesian thing and can be very frustrating. They are not up front with true costs all the time and they seemingly make up new fees as they feel like it. If you aren't familiar with true costs from research on the Internet then it can really get ugly.
Anyways...fees finally paid after I did the math and wrangled the money so we could go see dragons. I was halfway home on goal 2 for the day, time to get to work on goal 1.
We exit the park office and walk over to the cafe and...laying in the shade of the building...dragons. Four of them. Three makes and a female. If they didn't open their eyes every now and again, they were so relaxed they looked dead. They get drawn to the smells of the kitchen and then it gets to hot for them to move, so they nap all day. They were still impressive to see. Behind the kitchen we saw a young dragon walking around half chasing some monkeys.
The tour is about a 90 minute walk. There were more dragons to be seen. Two females guarding a nest (from the male dragons who like to eat dragon eggs). A HUGE male right next to the trail who walked away as we have gathered around to take pictures. And lastly a male dragon napping in the shade with one eye open and watching a (likely bitten) water buffalo slowly die in a mud hole. The water buffalo was not well, and the dragon knew it. At some point in the next few days, nature would happen.
Saw some birds and more monkeys on the trail. Oh, and I nearly stepped on a spitting cobra. That would have been bad. I made sure to have my sunglasses as tight on my head as I could for the rest of the walk. The venom from the spitting cobras in komodo causes permanent incurable blindness. So that's fun.
After the walk through the park and accomplishing goal 1, it was time to finish off goal 2.
The boat stopped at one island for some snorkeling, but we spent 5 minutes looking at dead coral and said "nope." and made them take us to the next stop.
The second island was better. And we hung out there for a bit. From this island I could ever Labuan Bajo, goal 2 was in reach! Then the wind picked up. And the 3 guys working on the boat decided to all sit on one side and overload the downwind side. So we are cruising with a solid lean. And this boat is not made to lean. But we cruise on. Then the driver decides to get cute with his approach and we run aground on some coral. Not just scrape the bottom a bit, but we are balanced above the water. 20 minutes of the guys trekking at each other and pushing the boat around and we then go another 10 uneventful minutes and goal 2...success!
Tomorrow I'm flying back to Bali for the a couple days in Ubud. It is the spiritual center of the island and Hindu culture of Indonesia. After that, I'm deciding between diving a sunken American WW2 ship or another sunrise volcano hike. I'm leaning toward the diving.
One more fun note...Tomorrow I leave the malaria zone for the last time on this trip. Only 7 more malarone pills left to take after tonight!
Pictures below of dragons and water buffaloes and the island of Rinca.
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