I flew into Bali and spent a few days there to get the holiday vibe on and then immediately flew to Labuan Bajo on the Island of Flores where I planned to organise my trip to see the Komodo Dragons.
I stayed in a very cheap dormatory called Centro Hostel (don’t get it confused with Centro Hotel). For one night it cost 100,000 rupiahs (about $7) if you payed direct, but there was a deal on the Agoda app giving you the accommodation for 65,000 ($5). This place was a room full of bunk beds with curtains around the beds and lockable draws and cupboards. The strange thing was the bunk beds were next to each other so you could either be sleeping next to your partner or friend or be sleeping next to a stranger. Luckily when I was there, it was quite empty. There are new showers and toilets in a another room. The breakfast was basic but for the price, you can’t expect much. The only negative I found was you had to eat your breakfast on your bed.
Komodo Dragons
I arranged to take one of the 2 day/ 1 night trips to see the islands and I went with the tour company Christian adventure tours. I wouldn’t recommend this company to anyone. The cost of the trip was o.k (800,000 rubiahs about $60), but they lied to me about the facilities on the boat, we had to wait an hour before we left in the morning because they weren’t ready when we got to the boats, and once we had started on our journey, we had to turn around and go back because they had forgotten the rice. The boat, we learnt, was a lot slower than the other boats as the staff on the islands were surprised how long our journey had taken to get there. This meant that we didn’t have enough time to do the long walks on the islands. Once we got over those disappointments, the trip was actually very enjoyable. The views were amazing!
The first island you go to is Rinca Island. This island and Komodo island are the only two islands in the world where you can find the Komodo dragons. When we arrived to the island at about midday, and after we paid for the national park fees, we headed out to find the dragons. We hadn’t gone far before spotting them as they had smelt the humans cooking their food and had come to inspect. They were just chilling out all together in a spot. Our guide gave us a lot of interesting information about the animals while we stopped and took pictures of them.
Once the animals decided they wanted to wander a bit, we decided it might get a little unsafe to hang around longer, so we continued on our walk. The walk took us to a nice lookout spot on the top of a hill looking out across the water and the other islands. The view was amazing!
Since we had arrived at the island too late, we didn’t see any other animals (except a monkey who had tried to steal my banana just as I had gotten off the boat, and one deer on our return trip near the park building) because the heat was too much for them, but we were extremely happy to have seen the dragons so easily.
After leaving Rinca island, we continued onto Komodo Island where Komodo national park is. Again we were able to find the Komodo dragons very easily and even got some pictures while they were moving this time. The walk around this island had to be short as they were closing the park soon but on the way we saw reindeer hanging out on the beach and a few wild boars.
Our night in Flying Fox cove
Our boat docked in a little cove near one of the islands, and at first I couldn’t understand why as it didn’t seem like a very special spot, but as the sun started to go down, the sky started to fill up with flying foxes. It was definitely a sight to see, even of we couldn’t see the animals too close up. It lasted for about half an hour before they all disappeared. Then it was food time for us as well as beers (which we had brought along). The staff on the boat did do a really good job of keeping us well fed and supplying us with water, tea and coffee throughout the whole trip and the food was quite delicious. We slept there that night on the very top deck of the boat under a well fitted taupauline with nice mattresses and blankets. at first we all wanted to sleep on the open deck but during the night it rained so we were very happy about the shelter.
Pink beach
The next day we visited a few spots to snorkel and the snorkelling wasn’t disappointing. We first went to a place called Pink beach and at first we couldn’t understand why it would be called that because it definitely didn’t look pink, but when you get really close to the beach, you realise that the sands are pink from all the coral which had washed up onto it. As we snorkelled around, we saw a wide variety of fish and a rather interesting turtle.
Manta Ray Bay
This next spot was called Manta Ray Bay and the moment we arrived, they were everywhere. We immediately jumped into the water to get a closer look although you could see them quite well from the surface. Be careful of the currents around here though. I got whipped out by a current the moment I jumped in and I had to fight a lot to get back to the boat (the staff on the boat don’t warn you; actually they don’t even speak English.)
The final stop before heading back to the mainland was to stop at this other beach. We don’t know what it is called but we know the not so good cabins there are really expensive, they wouldn’t let us take our water bottles off the boat and they even wanted us to pay to snorkel there. We didn’t pay but we did snorkel. There were quite a few strange coloured starfish in the water around the coast.
The storm
The end of our trip was definitely an adventure. While we were on the beach, a storm decided to come in. We ran back to the boat but we were soaked through before we got back. We sat in the boat for a few hours waiting for the rain to pass and all the time we were sat there, the boat was fighting the waves and hitting the sides of another boat to the point that a piece of the boat started to break off. The staff tried to untie us to move us behind that boat and get us out of the waves but as they untied us, they lost hold of the rope and we started drifting off. This might not have been so bad except that we passengers were the only ones still on the boat. All the staff were on the other boat trying to untie us. Luckily the captain dived into the water and managed to get to the boat in time before we drifted too far.
We waited it out until the storm had eased off a bit and then tried to make it back to Labuan Bajo. The waves were still really rough and some of the others on the boat were not enjoying the trip as we were being thrown around a lot. Luckily the staff took us back in a zig-zag fashion so that we could ride the waves instead of letting the waves capsize the boat. We finally made it back safe and sound.
With everything that went wrong on this trip, we still left feeling we had had an experience of a lifetime.
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