There’s only 3 more days in 2019, time flies, but it’s still not too late to write about the diving trip at Komodo Islands that I went back in September. This is the first part of the trip – a visit to view the famed Komodo Dragons.
Welcome to Rinca Island, here be dragons
Since there’s no direct flight from KL to Labuan Bajo, the Western fishing town of Flores closest to the Komodo National Park, we took the flight from KL to Bali, and then Bali to Labuan Bajo.
A note though, never fly Lion’s Air if your life depends on it. Other than the plane being old (which is acceptable), the service level is downright bad. On our return flight the computer system broke down and the ground crew refused to check us in manual method until the plane landed, which delayed things further on an already delayed flight, almost made us missed the connecting flight back to KL.
Anyway, back to dragons.
My dive trip was arranged by Melanie from Flow Dive Centre in PJ.
After spending a night at Labuan Bajo, we headed on to our liveaboard (more on that boat in next post), and the first destination was Rinca Island – one of the three largest islands included in Komodo National Park.
a bit of forced perspective doesn’t hurt any dragon
All visitors to Rinca island must be accompanied by a local guide, and it was obvious from the get go that it’s for our own good, preventing stupid tourists such as us to get ourselves into trouble with these magnificent creatures. These things looks almost like your usual monitor lizard but just, wayyyyy bigger, like size of a crocodile.
There were some pretty sad looking deer around the park too, and we were told that these were dragon food, which kinda explained how they look the way they did, dohhh.
a guide is definitely mandatory for dragon sightseeing
The guide did his best in explaining to us about Komodo dragons, their behavior, life cycle, and even helped us take some pretty neat photos. Wikipedia does a better job than I ever can, so I’m not going to even attempt, check out the entry here.
The tour lasted some 2-3 hours, we walked around the foot path to the top of one of the hills, where more dragons were loitering around. The view on top was quite neat, worth it.
the pink beach is due to all these coral bits (I think)
As a bonus, we also got to stop by a tiny island comprises entirely our of sand – and they’re pink! Yes, the famous pink beach of Komodo National Park.
pink beach island
The pinkness of the beach is from a sort of red coral bits making up part of the sand. Makes for a good photo if you pump up saturation a bit, otherwise they’re not exactly overwhelming to be honest. One of those things that looks better on instagram than in real life, oh well.
Some diving photos and what we managed to see underwater on this trip to come, it was a very tiring and overly satisfying few days of diving.
so cool!!! 😀 that dragon is looking at you like it’s thinking, this creature looks much tastier than deer meat! 😀
Sean: too many bones!
Eeeekkkkk!!! No, thank you!
suituapui: pet it!
So close with the Komodo dragon, you’re not scare?!!!
Happy 2020!
Choi Yen: haha wasn’t too close actually, got guide ba
Happy New Year! Hope 2020 is filled with many blessings.
Monica: happy new year to you too!
next bagan, jom
ignatio103: jom
did you find Khalessi’s grave?
Tyrion: it was already burnt to the ground.
And did you find Drogon? What is he doing now?
Valar morghulis.
Tyrion: hoarding gold, that’s what drogon loves.
LOL… wrong movie 😛
kekeke: best movie.
lol…. I like Lion Air’s real life marketing slogan We Make People Fly…. (when the plane breaks apart) #oii #shhh #toosoon
kekeke: kaboom
Lion Air is not so bad compared to Drogon Airlines. Open air flying, no seats, no seatbelts, no safety, can fall off anytime…
Tyrion: but there’s at least front row seat to the best excitement!
Drogon Airlines can also dodge Iranian or Russian missiles #oii #toosoon
kekeke: toosoonnnnn