Komodo Island

After Padar, our next stop was Komodo Island itself. It took another hour or so to get to Komodo Island.

On arrival, we had to check in with the ranger station and select a walk - short, medium, or long. We chose the medium walk. The walk itself was along a well marked path. Along the way, we only saw two dragons. The first one was nonchalantly sprawled on a footbridge, so we had to walk around the bridge. Apparently, it was mating season and the females were hiding from the amorous males, hence the lack of sightings. We saw another five hanging out near the kitchen - some other writers have witheringly referred to the dragons who hang out there as "pets". I didn't quite know what to make of this. I mean, why would wild animals hang out where humans frequent? All seven dragons we spotted were male. We also saw dragon food - deer and pigs.

After leaving the dragon spotting area, our next stop was Pink Beach on Komodo Island. There, we snorkeled over a pretty healthy (to my untrained eye) coral reef. There was a great variety of fish and both hard and soft corals. I opted to not carry a GoPro with me in the interest of traveling light, and I now regret that decision.

Our final stop was manta point. As with the komodo dragons, this was low season for manta rays. There were none to be seen, darn it. But, the coral reef was quite spectacular. We then returned to Labuanbajo at 5.30pm. Upon my return, I had another dinner at the ikan bakar stand.

All in all, this was a great day and a great start to my Indonesian adventure.

Atlas Obscura article on this site: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/komodo-nati…

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