Day 3

This morning we woke up to the most amazing sunrise from the boat, overlooking some mountains. We had sailed continuously since yesterday afternoon to arrive near Komodo Island. It was so hot in our room, that as soon as we got up, we went out for a snorkel. There was actually a lot of nice coral here, much nicer than anywhere i've seen since Fiji. There were also lots of tropical fish swimming close by to us. We stayed snorkelling here for a while, then it was time to set sail again. Other people who snorkelled this morning got to see a manta ray, so we're all hoping that we get to see one later at manta point.

Laba Island

We had around 2 more hours of sailing to do until we reached Laba island. It has a stretch of red sandy beach, the red colours in the sand are due to red coral which washes up and turns the sand red. When we docked up, they told us to swim across to the beach. We took our snorkels with us and swam over to Laba island. Meanwhile the crew ended up swimming across with the box containing all our cameras. We didn't want to miss out on those photo opportunities now did we! From the boat, the sand didn't look red at all, so we were interested to see it from the beach. When we'd swam across and got out of the water, the sand was red as it had lots of tiny pieces of coral in it. You could really only see the red standing close to the sand. I like it anyhow, it looked like a pinky colour from a distance. I tried to capture the colours, but on a camera, it didn't pick them up so well. While I messed around taking pictures, the other groups were trying to stack themselves on top of one another in the water with some of the children off the other boat. That was amusing to see!

Manta point

After red beach, we swam back to the boat and continued our journey to manta point. We didn't want to get our hopes up incase we didn't see any manta rays, but apparently there were quite a few spotted here last week. As a couple of people in our group saw them this morning at a different location, we thought we may have a chance of seeing some here. We'd sailed for another hour or so to reach manta point when some of our guides got ready to dive off the boat. They were searching for the rays. I was expecting manta point to be a bay, but it was just in the middle of the ocean.

Everyone was so eager to get in the water, but our guides wouldn't let us get in yet as the currents were too strong, plus there hadn't yet been a sighting of the manta ray yet. The guide was in the water for a while searching around, then he gave us a signal that we could all get in the water. We all snorkelled around frantically trying to spot the ray, so everyone separated and searched for it. I found it really hard work due to the currents, as I kept drifting away. At this point nobody had seen the manta ray, so we all had to get back on the boat so our captain could drive us to a slightly different location.

This time, our crew put out some rope and the rubber rings so people could hold on to the boat while it slowly sailed along. At least it wouldn't tire them out so much with the currents being so strong. There was only enough space for a few people at a time, so myself and John had to wait until some other people got tired of holding the rope. It was just about to be our turn, although someone who'd already been down on the rope wanted to go again, selfishly, so we had to wait longer. Just as someone else was coming back to the boat, I was just about to go down when Eric, the Canadian guy shouted there's the manta ray! I saw it gliding past from the boat, but it wasn't a clear view of it. At this point, everyone was going crazy all jumping off the boat trying to chase the ray. I even jumped into the water, and i've never done that before. I was trying to swim as fast as I could, but i'm not a strong swimmer, so found it difficult to keep up with everyone. John managed to swim fast and he was following it for a while until it swam off past them. Some of us were lucky enough to see the ray close up, and some were just unlucky. The guide helped to pull me along, but by then, the ray was long gone. I was pleased that John saw it, but disappointed that I didn't get to see it while I was in the water. Quite a few people in our group saw it, and some missed it. It was an adventure in itself on the lookout for the manta ray.

Komodo island national park

When we'd finished searching for the manta rays, we thought we'd just be sailing for the rest of the day. However, to our surprise, we are going to the Komodo national park today. Twenty minutes after we got back on the boat, we had to go and see the Komodo dragons. I didn't expect that as it said on the itinerary that it's on day 4 that you see the Komodo dragons. I think it's a lack of communication between us and our guides. I let the rest of our group know they needed to get ready to set foot on Komodo island, so people went off to get changed. It would have been nice if the guide had told us this at the start of the day!

We all had to pay a fee of 50,000 rupiah to take our cameras into the Komodo national park. We only really used one camera, so just told them we had one camera. We didn't need to pay any other fees as they were all included in the price we paid already. As soon as we set foot on the island, we were greeted by a guide who escorted us to the entrance. Then we were all given a briefing and we got shown the trail we'd be taking. John and I were silly enough not to bring any water, but we didn't get told we'd need to bring any either. We set off, now accompanied by 3 guides to protect our group of 17. One of the guides was as small as me, and he was going to be escorting us around the island!

Not long after we set off, we came across our first Komodo dragon. It was spread across a bridge that tourists would normally need to cross. We stood far enough back to be safe, but close enough to get a good view of the dragon. We had to take a diversion around it, cutting down some other pathway to get to the other side of the bridge. This time, we were able to see the front of the Komodo dragon. It was a male, and it was huge. We had the guide in front of us holding out his stick, but we were allowed to take pictures near them. They told me to bend down low and I had my back turned on the dragon. I was scared it would try and make a run for me, so John took a quick picture of me, and then I got one if him near the Komodo dragon.

We carried waking around the Komodo national park, and soon we saw another dragon lurking about. You have to have a guide on this walk, and it can see why. I wouldn't want to be wandering about this place unprotected. We saw a female, which was a lot smaller than the males, so it should be possible to tell which was which. As we've come here in the afternoon today, the guides said that they are less active at this time of day, so if we'd come in the morning, they probably would be moving about a lot more than they are now. We should be going to Rinca, (the other island the dragons live on) tomorrow morning, so hopefully we'll see more activity from them. We carried on walking the trail in the heat with no water, we were both gasping for some water, but it's only an hour walk, so we can get a drink afterwards.

It's a beautiful island and it's shared amongst local villagers who sometimes have problems with the komodos trying to steal food and water from the village. I'd heard that a few years ago, one of the Komodo dragons had mauled a little boy and he died from his injuries, which was so sad to hear. The villagers wanted something to be done about the komodos living so close to where they stay, but the animals are protected as they are an endangered species. I don't think I would want to be living too close to them to be honest! I spoke to the ranger who's small, he's from Komodo Island and has been working here as a ranger for a few years. He said it's a common occurrence that the dragons wander off through the village, which makes the locals very frightened of the dragons. I guess they have more of a community spirit here and watch out for each other. It was fascinating talking to someone from Komodo island, life must be so different for the people who live here. We continued walking through the park, walking through the woods and we had to walk up the hill, which was hard work in this heat. I was wishing for shade the whole way! We saw a few more dragons on our walk, in fact we saw around 7 all together, which the guides said we were lucky at this time of day, as they'd usually be off sleeping in the afternoon. Once our walk was finished, we thanked the guides and went to sit in the cafe area to get a well deserved drink. Then it was time to head back to the boat.

Party time?

While we were walking back to the boat, one of the German guys from the other boat suggested that we have a party on the boat tonight. We said let's get everyone on one boat and do it. We suggested it to our guides, but they didn't seem keen on putting the two boats together as there are children on the other boat. We suggested that everyone can come on our boat if they want to, so hoped they would agree with that. While we were waiting for dinner, we all played more cards. Some local boys sailed here on a boat to try to sell us the wooden carved Komodo dragons and various items they made. Some people bought some things, really trying to haggle the price down. To us it's a couple of pence or so, but to those boys, it is worth so much more. I felt really bad for them, as one boy requested that if he did the deal could he have some water. The island they live on, Komodo island does not have a fresh water supply so they have a real problem with getting water. At this point, it really hit home and made me appreciate how lucky we are. I got emotional and I said let's give them some more bottles of our water as we'll never get through them all.

While the boys were here, Eric got his clarinet out and they were fascinated with it, they wanted to try and play it, so Fiona started showing them how, even though she couldn't properly play it herself! One of them managed of get some notes out of it, while the others struggled. They had a good few attempts at it. Eric played them a few tunes as he's the expert. John wanted to have a go too as he thinks he can play it, so Eric tried to teach him Frerejaqa. Once he was shown, he had a go, or should I say blow! Nothing came out the first few times, so Eric said it's not about blowing hard, it's about the technique. After that, John started belting out a few of the notes from it! We were all impressed, I never knew he had it in him! The boys looked impressed too and not long afterwards they all left. It was actually good to have them on our boat, even if they were trying to sell us things, they are only trying to make a living. Meanwhile, the German guy swam over to our boat. He had a henna tattoo on the knuckles of both hands, it stated 'need beer'! It was the funniest thing i'd seen on our trip! One of the Czech guys captured the moment with his camera as he takes pictures of everything on our boat. The German got his wish granted and was given beer, but after that he got told to go back to his boat as we were about to eat dinner. We all eat dinner hoping the guys from the other boat would join us later, but we heard they were not allowed to swim over and the lifeboat would not let them come over, so we had our own party on our boat. We played lots of cards, danced the night away and most of the guys drank plenty of beer as they had an extra delivery of beer sent to the boat! A few of our guys did fishing and caught quite a few fish, so they will have that cooked up for lunch tomorrow and others went night snorkelling. What they said was fascinating was when they were shining the torch in the water, they could see lots of green plankton when they moved the torch across the water, the glow of the plankton shone through. It would have been cool to see that, but I was too afraid to get in the water to snorkel at night, as there could be sharks in the water! Everybody was ok and the party continued until the early hours of the morning.