It’s been a while since I’ve read Douglas Adams’ (et. al.) Last Chance to See, but I remember that it had Komodo Dragons in it. The German edition prominently features a Komodo Dragon on its cover, while the English editions feature the diverse animals that are discussed in the book in a more balanced manner. If I remember correctly, Adams was surprised how accessible Komodo Dragons were, as compared to the other animals in the book. And maybe not threatened quite as severely as some of the others.
When Adams visited Komodo island (presumably in the 1980s), Komodo National Park had already been established. The park comprises the two islands of Komodo and Rinca and many smaller islands in the area. It also protects the marine environments that surround these islands, and I had heard good things about scuba diving there.
I bet that even back in the day many tour operators offered Komodo trips to tourists.
Labuan Bajo Base Camp
The Komodo National Park lies between the islands of Sumbawa and Flores. It’s part of the Indonesian province of Nusa Tenggara Timur (NTT), the same province as Flores. After spending a couple of weeks on Sumbawa, I thought Komodo would be worth a detour.
Initially I wanted to book a liveaboard cruise to visit Komodo National Park. There are numerous operators who offer such cruises, with or without a diving package. However, the price range is rather high, and I heard that most of these cruise boats are crammed. Next I thought, I could settle in on the eastern end of Sumbawa and do day trips to Komodo. However, there are hardly any operators who offer such trips from Sumbawa.
Turns out, that Komodo and Rinca are much are further away from Sumbawa than they are from Flores. They are separated from Sumbawa by the Sape Strait. This is why almost all Komodo tourism goes through the town of Labuan Bajo, located on the north of the western tip of Flores.
I arrived at Labuan Bajo by overnight ferry from Sape on Sumbawa. The ferry was surprisingly comfortable and arrived surprisingly early in the morning. After breakfast, I started looking for accommodation and moved into Manta Manta Guesthouse, situated on the hillside right above the town center. Had great views on the town, the marina, and surrounding islands right from my room.
Overall, Labuan Bajo is a tremendously picturesque. At nighttime, it reminded me of some scenes from Monkey Island:
Compared to Sumbawa, Labuan Bajo is very much a touristy place. It wasn’t overly crowded, because I visited during wet season. But it’s got everything that tourists desire, without obvious signs of over-tourism. I’ve heard that the Indonesian government has invested into local infrastructure in recent years, and I think it shows. Labuan Bajo is also one of the cleanest towns that I’ve seen in Indonesia so far.
Komodo Day Trip
The Komodo National Park is Labuan Bajo’s main tourist attraction, and numerous tour operators have offices in the town center. Most of them seem to offer similar Komodo day-trips, that include land visits and snorkeling. Itineraries and prices only seem to vary marginally.
So I just booked a random tour and hoped for the best. The tour started at a modern passenger terminal at Labuan Bajo’s marina. I was surprised how many boats were leaving here, despite low season. Ours was a modern fast-boat, designed for about 30 tourists, and I think it was fully booked.
Our first two stops were on Pulau Padar, where we first hiked up to a small hilltop to enjoy the view. Then we headed over to “pink beach” for some sun-bathing and swimming:
Next, the boat took us to Pulau Komodo, arguably the main attraction of our trip. There are two major tourist outposts in its southern bay, each equipped with a massive jetty. We headed to the less crowded one, deeper in the bay. I think there’s no real village there, just a couple of warungs by the beach.
Here we met with our obligatory national park guides, and went for a short walk further inland. Right in the beginning, I saw a couple of deer and boars, who came surprisingly close to the human settlement, but quickly fled as they noticed our group. This gave rise to optimism, since Komodo Dragons like them as pray.
However, it took a little longer till we found any dragon. It was around noon by now, and most of them would be resting in the shady forest to avoid the heat. They were just lying there, showing no signs of activity whatsoever. The first one had its eyes closed initially, and frankly I wasn’t sure, if it’s even alive.
I found this slightly disappointing, but I’m not sure what else I had expected? I guess it’s unlikely to find Komodo Dragons roaming the forest, hunting, or feeding during such a short visit. On the bright side, their lack of activity allowed us to approach the Komodo Dragons very closely.
Many tourists took photos with the dragons, always protected by our guides’ defensive sticks. This does not mean that the guides held down the dragons. They didn’t touch them at all. But they were prepared to deflect the dragons in case of an attack, which is really rare though.
After watching two dragons resting in the forest, we finished our short round-trip and headed back to the settlement by the beach. To my surprise, we met three more dragons here, right at the beach. In fact, I almost stumbled over one of these dragons, since I was looking in a different direction. Locals had to warn me before I realized that the dragon was lying right behind to me.
This dragon was slightly more active than the ones we had seen further inland. It was propped up on its front legs, sticking its tongue out to smell. Another one came walking down the beach just moments later. Not too bad after all:
After leaving Komodo island, we made three more stops in Komodo National Park for snorkeling. Our hope was to see reef manta rays and we were not disappointed. At our last stop (close to Pulau Mauwang, I think) we met a large manta circling above the reef at a cleaning station for at least 20 minutes.
Soon, a big crowd of snorkelers had aggregated above the manta, who did not seem bothered. The manta was at a depth of about two to four meters. I got carried away and dove down to the manta’s level a couple of times. I tried to keep to its side and give it enough space though:
Diving in Komodo National Park
The next day, I headed to Scuba Junkie Komodo and spent a couple of days exploring the marine part of Komodo National Park more closely. This dive resort is located to the south-west of Labuan Bajo, near the village of Warloka. It’s on the mainland of Flores, not within the national park itself. But its only 1 km away from the island of Rinca, thus very close to the park. It’s best reached by boat from Labuan Bajo, but due to rough weather the journey took longer than expected.
I have very few photos of my stay at the dive center, none of them under water. The reason is that I was busy taking a course to get the Advanced Open Water certification.
Frankly, this was harder than expected. While I’ve always felt comfortable diving, I struggled focusing on other activities in parallel. E.g. using the compass and counting fin strokes for under-water navigation, while maintaining buoyancy at the same time. I’m not great at multitasking in general. But in the end, it was all good enough to pass.
The whole course and some additional dives took place at many amazing dive sites in Komodo National Park. We got to see more mantas, but also stingrays, reef sharks, moray eels, seahorses, frogfishes, turtles, tunicates, echinoderms, octopuses, squid, nudibranchs, mantis shrimps, lobsters, sea anemones, corals, … and many Teleost fishes (which I’m still struggling to tell apart).
And All the Rest?
Unfortunately, Flores is not famous for surfing, so I decided to move over to Lombok after all the diving. That said, Flores left a good impression on me. And it certainly has great beaches to enjoy, exotic wildlife to watch, interesting villages to visit, and mighty volcanoes to climb.
One thing that I was itching to see was Liang Bua cave, the site where Homo floresienses was first discovered. But in the end I decided against this detour (almost 4 hours by car from Labuan Bajo). There probably isn’t much to see in the cave itself, though the small museum might be nice.
Either way, this will have to wait for another time. Just hoping that I haven’t missed my last chance to see all of it.
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