Day 12: Komodos!!

We woke up bright and early, ready to go and haggle and go and see the komodos. We should have known better of Italians that they would run late. It wasn’t until 8:30 or so when we finally saw Thomas & Carolina, and they had a bit of business they needed to sort regarding their flight home. Carolina came with us, and we went off to the harbor. Back and forth, meeting a few police men, etc. we get a price for 600,000 to take a boat of people to Rinca. Fantastic. Now to get as many people as we can onto the boat! But where are they?? I’ve learned that Indo is a place that starts early. Boats to anywhere leave early. Scuba diving vessels leave early. Buses leave early. So 9:30 a.m. is  not a good time to find anybody on the street – and we looked! We looked for foreigners everywhere! Inside any baked good place, I’d go inside and ask the foreigners if they were up for going (answer = no). It was getting to be 10:00 a.m. and we are getting a little anxious that the fisherman is still even going to be there when we get back! Somehow, everything suddenly lines up for us! The travel agent across the street from our accommodation says he has a cousin who will take us out for 600,000 and he’ll take us snorkeling as well. Then, Carolina finds this girl who literally is fresh off of a boat from another island, lovely Canadian named Lyndsay, who says, yes, would love to come! Brilliant – 5 people, 600,000, we all set off to go to Rinca to see the Komodos.

Now, we had heard mixed reviews about the Komodos. Most people had said that it wasn’t really great, that it didn’t feel organic, and that the komodos just lay around and do nothing. Fortunately, Pallavi has taken me for enough wildlife spotting adventures that I have better set expectations. When you arrive on the island, you are met by a guide. The guide is there to protect you in the event of an attack, as komodos are quite hard to spot in the grass & are quite poisonous. The guide takes you to pay the park fees, and then lets you select from 3 kinds of walks (short, medium, long) of various terrains to go and try to spot komodos. We ask him which one he thinks is best, given the rainy conditions that day, and he says medium. He also says, usually you see komodos by our kitchen! Even though we don’t feed them, every day they hope to get lucky. Today was our lucky day too, because we saw 6 komodos outside of the kitchen. They are pretty amazing creatures that are hard to describe. They have the claws of an alligator, the snout and tongue of a snake, but the body of a lizard. They use their tongue to find their way, and track prey for 5 kms. They give no signs if they are going to attack you. They can go from a dead stop to a 18 km run (but they are just sprinters). Tons of pics. Thankfully, we saw one of the younger komodos walk into the forest or to be honest, we might not have believed that they actually lived in the wild! Our hike was pretty uneventful – the rangers weren’t really great at helping us spot the animals. Apparently this island is filled with wild boar, buffalo, horses, etc. We saw nothing – but it was 3 p.m., so I didn’t expect much.

We then stopped at another island for snorkeling (which I passed on), and then headed back home to just chill outside! Tomorrow, we’ll try to head over to Bijawa to see a tribal village, en route to Maumere, which we have to be at on 28/4 for a flight to Jakarta.