‘There be Dragons!’

We walked off the boat into the twilight, unexpectedly early. The feeling of walking on solid ground reassuring, if a little weird at first, as we made our way to our guest house.

Labuan Bajo felt like an easy place to be. The main street was wide and the whole place had a slightly sleepy feel.

We could see the tourism here centred around two things; diving and dragons. There were a few hotels and restaurants catering for the divers and dragon seekers, and everyone else got on with their lives.

The town was quiet as the rainy season was due – and when I say quiet I don’t actually mean quiet. The religious make up of the island is 75% Catholic and 25% Muslim (with an unknown number of both still believing in the animist ‘magic’ that was here long before either of the other religions showed up), but our minority Muslim Mullahs were making sure no one was left in any doubt about when it was time to pray.

Often one would start with the other four or five staggering their start times so that we got a full hour each time. As in all things you have some good callers to prayer, and some slightly less good… the loudest of them all had a voice that conjured God and brought the sky to meet the ocean …and several of the others, not so much.

Perhaps Labuan Bajo was a place trainee Mullahs learned their trade…and I am delighted to report they were getting plenty of practice.

We arrived at the Manta Manta guesthouse and met the manager Pepeng, such a warm and considered man, I think I would even have bought time share off him if he’d been selling it such was my confidence in him after only the briefest of meetings… and he did turn out to be gold in our unfolding adventures.

When we got connected to WiFi that night there was an email from a dear friend who had travelled through Indonesia in the 90’s and he told us that one of his travelling highlights was on this very island.

‘Sunrise at Kelimutu.’

It sounded fantastic. Kelimutu is a volcano with three lakes at it’s summit, each a different colour and each with it’s own significance: Tiwa Atu Mbupu (lake of old people spirits) Tiwa Nuwa Muri Koo Fai (lake of young spirits) Tiwa Atu Polo (lake of evil spirits). The lakes change colour every now and again due to changes in chemical make up and volcanic activity – or, because messages are being communicated from the spirits…!!

It sounded epic so we had a family meeting and looked up the route to the volcano.

Sixteen hours on a bus on some of the most crazy roads I had ever seen…no way of sugar coating that!

What were Flores bus drivers like?!

We decided the place to start was our local Pelni Ferry Ticket Office …we had learned by now that all good journeys in Indonesia start with a Pelni Ferry Ticket Office. Could we get a ferry to the next island further inland? The town nearest the volcano was poetically named ‘Ende’ and if there was a ferry from there it would cut down our sea travel time (surely our ‘flat calm sea’ luck had to run out at some point). Kupang on West Timor was where we were headed next, the very last Island before Australia, wow, had we really made it this far!

The Pelni Ferry Ticket Offices were only a mile out of town so we walked, majorly covered up in whatever hats and sunglasses we could pull together to protect our sunburned faces…we did not look cool!

Which was fine because we were not cool – it was bloody hot – madly I did the journey twice that day, once during my early morning walk and explore at 5.30 (after the first Mullah chorus woke me at 4.30) – it was cooler then but by the time I got back to the guesthouse at 7.30 the day was warming up nicely.

The family walk didn’t set off until 10.00, after a leisurely breakfast. The office was up a hill and dripping versions of ourselves slid in through the doors, only to discover the Pelni ticketing team playing games on their phones because their ticket issuing machine wasn’t working.

We found out that the next Pelni ferry leaving Labuan Bajo took three days (Yes – 3 days!!) to get to West Timor – it went to lots of different islands on the way and it’s last stop before Timor was Ende – from there we would only have to be on the boat for seventeen hours…

After two hours of sitting in the offices it was obvious that we weren’t going to get a ticket today, and as we walked back we discussed our options.

It was quite an easy decision really, we have very short memories and none of us could remember just how horrible bus journeys could be …but we did know that three days on a boat had the potential to be really grim.

We had known for a while that we were now in the ‘Ring of Fire’, which consists of 452 volcanoes all around the Pacific Ocean (75% of the worlds total volcanoes) and we were currently on an island with 16 of them (one of which had been upgraded to ‘restless’ a month before!) …we all felt we should honour the fire beneath our feet and go and pay our respects.

There was a clock ticking now though, we wanted to get to Timor as soon as possible – we needed to give ourselves every chance of finding as green a way as we could across that last piece of ocean to Australia…

We talked to Pepeng when we got back and he said there was a 6.00 a.m. bus to Bajawa every day so we could pack after we got back from going to see the Komodo dragons tomorrow and leave the next morning – a plan.

We went to bed early that night, we had travelled a long way to see the dragons and we were excited…we each made our peace with our hopes and expectations, not knowing if we’d see one of the cute, ugly, giant, deadly, cannibalistic lizards…

Dragon Day started at 5.30 – the boat leaving the bay just after six. There were fourteen of us on board, ten tourists and four crew. Jonas, our captain for the day, told us we would spend the first three hours at sea, arriving on Padur Island first, ‘for a quick hike to the top of a small hill’, where we could see the beauty of three beaches all with different coloured sand. Then we would be off to Komodo in search of those magnificent lizards before we went snorkelling on ‘pink beach’ …with a swift trip to ‘Manta Point’ on the way back.

It sounded like an incredible day…

Our boat was a ‘slow boat’ – dragon seekers could go on day trips on either a slow or a fast boat, the fast one going to six locations rather than four but it was double the price. As we sat slowly chugging across the waves I knew we’d made the right choice – whether we saw a dragon or not, just being this close to the sea offered an intimacy we hadn’texperienced before…I went and sat on the roof with the sun slowly rising and the sea smooth and deep. I could get used to this (…as long as it NEVER got rough!)

We saw two lots of dolphins on that trip, one was our closest encounter yet, and rare according to our Captain. Watching them gliding through the water, shiny and sleek in the early morning light, I could feel a little of the religious wonder I heard in my favourite Mullahs voice each morning alive in my  own heart.

We arrived on the island in good spirits and saw deer at the bottom of the hill – those deer made sure they stayed close to the tourists who clearly made for better companions than the newest inhabitants of this island. Apparently there were dragons here now – they are really good swimmers and are slowly heading outwards from Komodo island. We wondered how long before they reached the UK…it added a nice bit of jeopardy to the stroll up the hill but our guides were quick to reassure us, ‘the Komodo’s were only in the north.’

…Just a little walk up the hill!

It felt like we climbed Kilimanjaro, the heat was intense and every time we got to what we thought was the top, there was another bloody bit to climb. I was being really quite irritating as well, reminding everyone that ‘their faces had to be shielded from the sun at all times’…I’m surprised they didn’t push me off…

(Why is it that when there’s a top to a mountain, we all feel like we have to go there, even when we are nearing heart attack potential?)

The view was worth it when we finally got to the top. (Maybe that’s why!) You could see three different coloured beaches if you squinted, and turned your head on one side – but it didn’t matter, the shapes of the coves and the colours of the sea were spectacular…although I think at that point we would have liked looking at anything that meant we didn’t have to climb anymore!

We did also see a pair of soaring eagles and a bright green bird which helped distract us from the lung busting hike.

Back down at the bottom I threw myself full body in the sea with all my clothes on… Why not, I was soaked anyway?

And then we were off to Komodo dragon Island, this was it. The reason we were all here! It took about an hour to get there and the closer we got to the island the more of the forest we could see, each of us straining for a glimpse of a giant lizard swimming away from the island or pounding along the beaches.

We walked towards the forest along a long jetty and were met by our guides for the day – they told us not to get too close (duh!) and that there had been 19 tourists killed by bites from Komodo’s… Nearly all of them, people who had gone off on their own into the forest.

We got the message pretty clear… If you want it up close and personal, you needed to split off from the group 🙂

For Rosa, it was her first time walking through a jungle, knowing there was something deadly – something that would almost definitely see you before you saw it. I had forgotten how it felt to be hunting for a predator that was way more skilled at hunting you!!

It was thrilling, exciting and a little bit on the edge… our first sighting was actually a wild boar which I have been trying to see every time I’ve been to France and would have been wildly excited to get a glimpse of there…here I just hoped it knew where the nearest dragon was because it looked like dinner to me…

After about fifteen minutes the lead guide pointed his long cleft stick (our only protection against the marauding lizards!) …there was a baby Komodo in the undergrowth, quite a rare thing on the island because the big Komodo’s eat them. The babies have to live up trees, or they get munched. It was about 2 foot long, a year old our guide said, and we loved the way it scampered through the brush…we had seen a Komodo 🙂

When it came to our first proper sighting it was a bit more like the panda’s in China than the hushed silence of the sighting of a dangerous wild animal. It turns out your average Komodo is really lazy, or at least they want you to think they are.

There was one lying in the clearing ahead of us with about 30 tourists spaced out around it… most of them about three metres away. Some though were looking on their phones paying no attention to the ‘sleeping’ lizard – there were no fences or barriers and quite a lot of meaty looking ankles on display – fatalities might be about to go up to twenty…

We slowly moved closer and watched our first ever dragon, for all the world looking like it was dead, and then we saw its eye flicker open…

Quite a moment!

The dragon way of catching prey is to fake being asleep for a really long time and when anything forgets it”s there, and comes close enough, they give it one bite and wait for it to die because their saliva is so full of disgusting bacteria one nip and you’re a goner.

It was hard to leave ‘our first Komodo behind but there were lots of tourists wanting a glimpse. We renewed our vigilance and our temptation to just go up the track to the side had gone down a notch or two – we saw a fantastic yellow bird up in the trees and that sense of being somewhere that belongs to the animals was wonderful.

We saw two more Komodo dragons before the end of the tour – one a little more active – whipping its head round with a speed that showed just what they were capable of.

Our guide told us that there are 4000 of them spread out over the five islands they are now living on. Not a massive population, but a protected one. The Indonesians are proud of their dragons, and I could see why. I would’ve happily spent the whole day on that island looking for them, seeing glimpses of them… These giant lizards have been around for 4 million years and they felt prehistoric, and properly dangerous…nothing fluffy about a Komodo!

It was time to leave and we headed off to have lunch on the boat and to go to pink beach where we were going to try snorkelling for the first time.

I had no idea what to expect.

We were given snorkels and massive flippers and pointed at the sea. How hard could it be?!

I waddled down the brilliant white beach (with a hint of pink 🙂 along with everyone else. It’s so weird breathing through a tube, add to that bloody big clown feet and you are looking about as elegant as a beached whale. Glam-a-rous!

We didn’t so much as slide into the sea as flop, and then the world opened up before us.

A spectacular array of little blue fish big rainbow ones, bright yellow and  stripey ones. Corals of different shapes and colours, a huge sea slug and one enormous pufferfish… We were in their world now and it was beautiful.… and then I noticed the dead coral, was that natural or was that because the ocean was getting hotter?

Pepeng had told us that the Indonesian government had banned fishing using dynamite and whilst it was largely unenforced elsewhere it had made a real difference in Labuan Bajo. It had allowed a whole load of the marine life to come back to the area. I wondered if the explosions had killed the coral?!

About a third of it was dead… I know coral bleaching is caused by the rise in ocean temperatures, is that what I was seeing? Seeing it first hand was hard.

I have never snorkelled in tropical water…but anyone who has will know it’s a paradise worth saving.

After an hour we were whisked away to Manta point. One of the women on the boat saw a turtle dive under the water as we cruised by and Rosa the captain and I started scanning the water. After about fifteen minutes I decided to take a picture of him stood on the prow of his boat, and that’s when he saw it. He shouted and pointed and Rosa saw the beautiful green of its back, and me? I managed to capture by accident the glimpse of its beauty as it passed us by.

We carried on scanning the water when up ahead we saw lots of boats and what look like a swarm of something in the water.

All of a sudden the boat was a hive of activity – everyone was putting on their snorkels and flippers and jumping in the ocean – there wasn’t really time to think ‘What the f***?!’ I was rushing to get my flippers on and before I knew it I was jumping in – I’m glad I didn’t have too much warning or it might have been me having an episode of megalohydrohalassophobia.

It turns out that ‘Manta Point’ is the place in the ocean where giant mantarays come to eat, play and generally hang out and if you are lucky and swim in the right spot you will see them.

The ‘swarm’ I had seen from a distance turned out to be us, loads of snorkelers moving around in random ways trying to spot these intelligent and beautiful creatures.

The ocean was deep here and I had nearly given up trying to avoid the ‘swarm’ when the guy directly in front of me pointed…I saw two swimming away from us, deep in the ocean. My flippers were not even close to being a match and I lost sight of them in seconds – just long enough to realise why it was so wonderful to see them!

When we got back on the boat one of the woman showed us her pictures of diving down to meet them a few days earlier – they were so graceful …and massive – I marvelled again at how full of wonder our world is!

It was time to head home …sitting there with Theo and Rosa at the very front off the boat I was filled with a fierce love for our little family and the journey we had come on together.

We had had an experience none of us would ever forget – we had had quite a few intense and stressful days along the way and  a day like this, a day full of adventure and ‘danger’ – a day full of beauty and wonder was precious…

And then the real danger of life in the tropics came and bit me on the bum…or on the back to be more precise! As we approached shore I started to feel really hot…

Neither Rosa nor I had put sun cream on our backs when we went snorkelling – we were going in the water why would we put sun cream on?

After my fierce and irritating insistence that we were to keep our faces covered at all costs I had managed to turn a huge part of my body the colour of a lobster – the irony was not lost on me!