Indonesia - Flores, Komodo National Park

Part of the Komodo Archipeligo

After a couple of days in Lembongan it was time to move on again and this time to Flores and Luaban Bajo. We had arranged to do a three day diving liveaboard trip around the island of Komodo. We arrived a couple of days early however so checked into a nice hostel set on a hill that overlooked the harbour. Labuan Bajo  itself was tiny and instead of doing any day trips we decided to save the pennies and just have a couple of days chilling out. We found a nice treetop bar that overlooked the sea and had a shaded roof terrace and free wifi! We went for lunch and after a long chat on skype to my parents, lots of internet browsing and lots of reading we left 10 hours later!!

Our livaboard boat

The day of the trip arrived and we excitedly went down to the harbour to meet our crew and the two dutch girls who would be joining us on the boat. Unsure about what the boat would be like we were very pleasantly surprised – it was much bigger than we were expecting with a whole section at the back for all the dive equipment, a little kitchen, dining room and all the cabins down below. There were also two big sun decks J There were 5 crew members, all local Indonesians, to run the boat plus our dive master who was also from Flores. Over the course of the trip we were completely spoilt, the food was fantastic and we had pretty much everything done for us – all our dive tanks changed and equipment washed for us, they even made our beds! The first day we did three dives, the second we did four including a dawn and a night dive and the final day we visited Komodo National park to see the Komodo dragons and then did a further three dives. I won’t go into each dive in detail but I will say overall the diving was phenomenal!!

Our two favourite dives were ‘Manta Point’ and ‘Castle Rock’. Obviously we went to Manta Point in search of manta rays and at first we thought we might not see any! We swam around for about 15 minutes and saw absolutely nothing but dead coral, to make matters worse our dive master was swimming so quickly through the current we had to swim as fast as we could just to keep up! We weren’t disheartened for long though as we saw in the distance four schooling Manta Rays swimming towards us. They were so beautiful and graceful it was incredible. We sat on the ocean floor and just watched them for about 10 minutes. They were quite inquisitive and swam really close to us whilst we sat really still trying not to scare them with our bubbles. In total we saw about 10 Rays that dive, all varying in size but the largest of which was about 4m across.

The best dive by far though was ‘Castle Rock’. We jumped off the boat and went straight down rather than waiting for each other on the surface because the currents were really strong. I do not exaggerate when I say it was like jumping into one of those aquarium tunnels. The water was crystal clear and there were fish everywhere! Huge schools of fish of all different colours and sizes. Straight away we could see turtles and about 5 reef sharks in amongst the fish. We stayed in one place for about 25 minutes just watching the insane amounts of marine life coming and going and then started making our way around the rock. We were just coming around the side of the rock, swimming quite hard against the strong current when I looked up and saw two dolphins! A mother and a baby dolphin swimming side by side and heading off into the blue!! I couldn’t believe it. I turned around to make sure Mike had seen the dolphins only to find him frantically (and silently) banging his tank trying to get my attention…apparently the dolphins had been there for about 2 minutes and too engrossed with the small fish I had been bumbling along unaware whilst everyone else was going ballistic trying to get my attention. When we finished the dive none of us could believe quite how amazing it was – Sipadan was brilliant but I think this probably topped it!

White-tip reef sharks

Dolphin and baby

As well as all the diving we also visited Komodo National Park in search of Komodo dragons. We got the little speed boat from our big boat to the island and went to meet our guide. Within 5 minutes we had seen our first dragon…he was sleeping underneath the guide hut and had two broken legs, apparently the result of fighting with one of the other males (over a female). He looked half dead to be honest and we all hoped that he wouldn’t be the only dragon we saw. We also hoped that the story was true and that he hadn’t had his legs purposefully 

broken to guarantee the tourists a sighting!! We moved on and started walking around the island, we walked up a hill to see a nice view of the surrounding waters and then straight back down to the guide huts. Although the walk was pretty short (!) we did manage to see three more dragons along the way.  On the way out we also met a girl waiting by the gate, she hadn’t been allowed into the park because she was menstruating. Apparently dragons have a very keen sense of smell and they are attracted to the smell of blood. One woman got attacked and killed in the park a couple of months ago because the dragons could smell blood on her! Difficult to believe when you see them lazing in the sun or strolling at snails pace around the park but they can actually run about 20km an hour and can be really vicious.

When the three day trip was over none of us wanted to get off the boat! We’d had such a good time…unbelievable diving, amazing food, fantastic weather and great company! The final day was also my 26^th birthday so when we got back to Labuan Bajo Mike and I went out for a yummy meal at a really nice Italian restaurant. Then we met up with the girls and some of the crew from the boat for cocktails. All in all an awesome birthday!!