Day 68: Komodo Island, Indonesia

Wednesday, 15 March 2017
At Sea — Indian Ocean … En Route to Bali

Stats @ Ship’s Time 9:00p (CIST) … UTC 1:00p (15 March)
Temp: 81.3F (27.4C)
Position: 8.55.84S / 118.48.64E

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.
Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.
The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms
their energy while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn.
~ John Muir ~

Another port of call that left us rather drained by the time we returned to the ship to seek a nice refreshing shower.  But what a wonderful day it was on Komodo Island, our first stop in Indonesia, and the largest of a series of islands that make up Komodo Island National Park … a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

We had a quiet morning on the ship before our noon arrival at Komodo.  I was on the deck 5 promenade reading my book when the island, its steep hills covered in lush green vegetation, came into view.  I thought to myself that it was worth enduring the humidity to see the island clad like this instead of naked and dusty red when it is “frazzled by the sun and winds” during the dry season.  And then I went to the cabin to prepare for our tour.

If one wants to disembark at Komodo, one must be on a tour — with the ship or arranged privately.  End of discussion.  This is a national park rule to protect visitors from the top — and only — predator on the island … the Komodo dragon.  The authorities don’t want people to get off the ship under the guise of visiting the shopping stalls at the Loh Liang tender pier and then slip away to go looking for the dragons, do something to agitate them, and end up being killed as a result.  It has happened in the past — the dragons, after all, are carnivorous!  And their saliva carries enough bacteria to infect wounds and lead to death.

Having followed RTW reports for years, I knew it was possible to get off if I booked a private tour, but all of my information came from other cruise lines.  The question was, would O follow suit?  I waited for the 2016 RTWers to report that O had indeed allowed those on a private tour to disembark.  Now I was set to book my own … with the same operator they used … Go to Komodo Tours.  The key criteria for O: I had to provide proof of the arrangements I had made.  Familiar with cruise line requirements, Hendrik requested passenger names as registered with Oceania, cabin numbers, and nationality … although the latter may have been just for his own records.  He then sent me an email with a manifest, addressed to O, showing the participants and requesting we be allowed off the ship on the first tender.

I won’t go into all the details of coordinating with Destination Services on the ship.  The end result of our discussions — have the group at the Insignia Lounge at 11:30a to pick up tender tickets.  I wrote up the instructions to have everyone show up at 11:15a so that Mui and I could collect the tour fee from the participants — $100/person for trekking & snorkeling; or $65/person for doing only one or the other.  Everyone showed up on time — but we ended up standing around outside the lounge while we collected the money as a show rehearsal had been scheduled — Destination Services was not happy as that delayed their setting up as well.  In any event, collecting the money on the ship turned out to be a smart thing as after the trek some of the participants decided not to snorkel — collecting funds from people at that time would have been a logistics nightmare.

We were first inside when the doors opened at 11:45a.  Mui made a beeline to get the 33 tender tickets for our tour, while the rest of us congregated in the starboard back corner as my instructions indicated.  Using the manifest we had asked participants to sign as they handed over the money earlier, we distributed the tickets to everyone.  We were handing out the last few when Simone from DS approached us, ready to escort our group down to the tender.  In our wake, they started calling the O tours — we shared the boat with at least one of those groups.  It was 12:15p and we were off on our adventure.

Once ashore, I walked ahead of the group and found Hendrik.  He was ready for us with his team.  I had already put people into groups, asking them to congregate around the first person on the list.  We called the names for each group to form them, and a few minutes later we were taking a path behind the kiosks to limit the shopping temptation.

Escorted by two National Park rangers, each group was taken to a shade shelter where we were shown a map of the park and told which trail we would be hiking — the medium difficulty one, but some found it a little too strenuous later.  We were also given the rules to follow during the trek … such as not feeding the dragons!

We had the trail pretty much to ourselves, going first to the kitchen and NP HQ area where we saw our first Komodo dragons … six in all, I believe.  In the shade of the tree canopy, they were very well camouflaged and we might have mistaken them for logs had not the ranger encouraged one of them to move with the long stick he was carrying.  Known as ora locally, the Komodo dragon is known to be “fleet of feet,” but this one moved slowly and crashed back on the ground again to join his slumbering comrades.  Well, they looked like they were slumbering, but a closer look showed their eyes were open, and they were tracking us carefully … more by smell than eye sight, I think.  We kept a respectful distance from them … even when the ranger took our photos with one of them.

We later learned that, as Hendrik had noted, none of the ship’s tours visited this area, so we were privileged to see more of the dragons, and earlier in our trek.  Very strong, these big critters have hooked claws.  The tongue is forked.  Apparently they can swim as easily as they can climb a tree — the latter would be quite a feat for the lumbering adults.  Their favorite prey is the Timor deer and wild pigs — both of which we saw during our trek.

After seeing the dragons, we went further into the forest.  It was hot and humid, and we were glad of the tree cover as we walked.  Our path took us up a steepish hill — partly using steps with high risers that were challenging to some — especially those of us with short legs ;-)  The view that greeted us when we reached the top of Golgotha Hill was worth the effort — the entire bay, with our ship in the distance, was laid out before us … the landscape a palette of blues and greens … with puffy white clouds for accent.

We continued the walk on a flat trail, stopping periodically to talk about some of the plants and flowers.  At a palm tree that had fallen down after completing its lifecycle, we were told how the heart of the tree under the bark is pounded into flour and used to make pancakes.  The ranger also explained that the palm trees are safe havens for baby Komodo dragons — momma dragon apparently guards its eggs, but once the dragons hatch, they are fair game for any of the older dragons, including momma.

At this point, we started running into some of the O tours — group sizes looked to be twice as big as ours.  They had not seen dragons yet, so most people looked to be unhappy campers.  That feeling was hopefully erased when they later saw the dragons at the watering hole.  Afterwards, everyone we spoke to who was on one of those tours said they saw two dragons … we saw four in that same area.

Our next stop was billed by Hendrik as an “extra” — the nest of a Komodo dragon.  What we saw was a rather tall pile of dirt with several holes on top.  I’d say the nest was at least 5 feet high and 2- or 3-times as wide at the bottom.  The dragons, we were told, are rather lazy, and use an existing bird nest to start building their own, growing it each time they return to lay eggs.  They open several holes, put an egg in one or two of them to distract any predators that might come seeking a tasty tidbit, and hide most of the remaining eggs in another hole.  Only 50-75% of the eggs hatch, and a smaller percentage survive to adulthood.  The gender is determined by the air temperature … high temps resulting in male hatchlings.  Indeed, most of the dragons on Komodo are male — not great for future productivity of course.  I believe Hendrik said there are around 2,800 dragons on Komodo, with smaller populations on the other islands of the NP.  The practice of feeding them has been stopped, and now that the dragons have been weaned off of “ready-food,” they are on their own to hunt if they want to eat.  That said, Hendrik told us that their preferred food source — deer and pig — are becoming scarce, so the feeding practice may have to be resumed at some point.

After seeing the nest, we retraced our steps and took the path to the watering hole.  The last of our trekking stops.  Here we saw four more dragons — and some dragon poop, to boot!  These animals seemed more alert, all of them following our movements … and they were drooling!

Skipping the shopping kiosks, we returned to where we started our trek.  Here’s where Hendrik needed to provide the guides accompanying the two other groups with better instructions as they took their people to the shopping area.  I had agreed that we could re-group into 2 for the snorkeling since the boats were capable of holding a higher number of people, so we had no choice but to wait for everyone to gather.  This took a bit of time to accomplish, resulting in less time for the snorkeling portion of the day.

The two boats were tied together, so some of us had to make our way into the first boat and then climb into the next one.  Spryness was a help in doing so.  As we left the pier, the crew set out a buffet of food on each boat for our snacking pleasure.  There was everything from rice, to noodles, to fried chicken, calamari, and stir fried chicken, to seaweed salad and pickled vegetables, to deep fried eggplant.

The boat ride to the pink sand beach took about 25 minutes.  The scenery along the way was beautiful, with amazing cloud formations and blue skies adding to our pleasure.  We had our second glitch of the day when we arrived at the snorkel spot.  Most people had signed up to snorkel off the boat.  But the crew on the other boat — where the snorkel equipment was — apparently told everybody that due to strong currents they would be snorkeling from the beach … and sent the equipment off to shore with a few of the passengers.  So, those who had not brought their own equipment had no choice but to get into the rickety little boat operated by a local to go ashore.  This boat was to have been used for the few people who had asked to snorkel from the beach.  Mui and a few others who had their own equipment had the better end of the deal because they could jump right off the boat without wasting time.  This is something else I will mention to Hendrik when I write him so that the experience can be improved for others.

Those of us not snorkeling eventually made our way onto the rinky-dink boat for the short ride to the beach for a walk and to see the pink sand.  The water here was quite clear and there was fish of varying sizes swimming close to shore.  The sand really did have a pink hue — from crushed red coral.  Very pretty.  And very scenic.

As for the snorkeling — Mui later reported that there was an abundance of beautiful coral, plenty of fish, and it was overall good snorkeling.  Except that due to the tide, the plankton was swarming, causing murkiness.  Being a strong swimmer, he went out near a rock jutting out into the sea and reported later that the water was clearer there.  This was the area where Hendrik had cautioned there were strong currents, so many did not venture in that direction.  Nonetheless, everyone who went in the water said they enjoyed themselves … and I enjoyed dipping my toes in as well.

At 4:00p, it was time to call a halt to the day’s activities.  We got a later start returning to the pier than planned, because it took a while to get everyone back in the boat.  We still had plenty of time before the last tender at 5:30p, so no worries … but there was no time left for shopping for those who planned to do so.  Onshore, we tied up at the same pier that we departed from … the one where the tenders had dropped us off this morning.  But with the tide very low, the tenders were now operating from another pier.

We bid Hendrik farewell, he presented me with a scarf his wife had made — a nice gesture from a family-owned operation — and began the trek up one long pier, through a gauntlet of locals hoping to make the last sales of the day, and down a shorter pier and a very steep wooden plank to where the tender was tied up.  It was not quite 5:00p.  Armando, from ship security, took our cabin numbers and confirmed we were the last.  Once we were onboard and the tender was hoisted, there was no reason to wait until the scheduled 6:00p departure, so Insignia set sail at 5:30p.  Destination … Bali … our next port of call in Indonesia.

Click here for a few more pictures from our afternoon on Komodo Island.

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