Flores and Komodo

After Ubud we flew to Labuan Bajo in Flores where we were met by guide and whisked from the airport to the port on onto our boat that was to be out home for the next three days.

The boat was a converted fishing boat we had four AC cabins for the 7 of us and one bathroom between us with a hand flushed toilet and a cold shower. As well as our guide we had the captain, a few crew and a cook. The cook managed to bring vast amounts of good food to us from his primitive kitchen at the back of the boat. We always felt guilty when we failed to eat all the food supplied.

Upstairs we had our dining area and on top we had a lounging area with a couple of foam mattresses on the deck and a couple of chairs. Definitely no cruise liner but comfortable enough.

Our boat from above.

 

We sailed out of Labuan Bajo harbour and headed out. The seas where calm and the scenery great. The islands here are much drier than Bali and sometimes the hills reminded me of Canberra's bare hills, but stuck in a gorgeous blue sea.

We sailed to the first of many snorkelling locations. Each one seemingly better than the last. This  first one was Kelor island. Catherine Anne and I decided climbing the hill in bare feet was a good idea. Seemed less of a good idea on the way down.

From there we went and visited a traditional fishing village on Rinca.

Small fish drying

A boy who followed us around and talked in Indonesian with Alison for a while. He spotted a Komodo dragon for us who had been raiding their goats.

We anchored off Kalong Island for the night and watched  thousands of Fruit bats head out while enjoying the spectacular sunset.

The next day we set off looking for dragons. First off we went to Rinca were we paid the grumpy National Park man our money and a guide with a big stick took us for a hike. We found this medium sized one with his mouth all bloody not far from the Rangers houses.

The walk took as through a dry forest then up onto the hills. We saw Macaque monkeys who eat the crabs around the mangroves and some pigs and a Komodo nest but no Komodos.

But we found no more dragons :( Apparently it is mating season in July and all the big ones head off to mate in private so all the ones left are the teenagers. You are not allowed to feed the dragons, but because it is Indonesia if you have enough money you can get a special 'permit'. We had seen a big flash white cruiser go by and apparently they had paid to have some goats fed to the dragons. This was the teenagers finishing off the goats. 

Dry and hot and a little disappointed we cruised on to Pink beach for some snorkelling. The snorkelling there  was really good with more soft corals than I have seen before.

Out guide reorganised a bit here and we went to Komodo island to try out luck again. We had a nice hike through the forest spotting Deer, Pigs and birds but no dragons.

We sailed for an anchorage nearby for another great sunset. Not sure if the dust from the volcano on Java that stopped the flights to Bali was adding to out sunset colours but they were great.

A group of sea eagles was coming down and fishing just off out boat.

The next day we sailed to  Padar island and did a hike up the steep hills and along the ridge enjoying really great panoramic views. This one one of my favourite bits of the holiday.

We snorkelled again  pretty much by ourselves here where there was an abundance of fish. At some points we were swimming through vast schools of brightly coloured fish between towering coral outcrops. Just awesome. 

From there we boated back to Kanawa island not far from Labuan Bajo for one last snorkel. Much busier than the last spot and all the kids except Anne were snorkelled out, but again it was different with a sharp drop off off the beach where  you could explore along the drop off. Then we headed back to Labuan Bajo,

Labuan Bajo is a fairly small place growing quickly with the increase in tourists. Our hotel was a bit ordinary on a typically polluted beach. Lots of staff but no one seemed to have much of an idea of what to do. The next day was fairly stressful as we had a tour organised to some markets and some caves that our guides insisted we do just before getting on the plane. We left the hotel early to  hit the ATM's hard as I had to pay for the whole tour and hotel in cash so ended up with a huge pile of  mostly 50000 Rp notes ( $5)  to pay over 2000 dollars. We went to a nice Italian place in town for lunch before the tour but they took about 2 hours to bring us food, that we then wolfed down in 5 minutes before we did the tour we did not want to do while counting our cash in the car before getting to the airport just in time.

We flew back to Bali and said goodbye to Jen, Kelly and Anne who flew back to Australia. I had been great having a big family holiday together again and was hard to see them go. We then had two nights of luxury in Sanur on the beach in Bali mostly eating and shopping before heading home to Jakarta.