10th September - NE Komodo Island - snorkeling

Tuesday 10^th December

The photos today are not brilliant.

My little (cheap…) underwater Olympus camera isn’t wonderful, and neither am I, at watery photography.  But I had such a beautiful swim this morning…I took 52 photos, and these are the best… (You can imagine the others weren’t very good…)

Our friends Richard and Meriloy were in this area a few years ago.  I couldn’t remember the details, only that they had been diving, and had seen dragons. I was inordinately impressed by this, and now I am one of the lucky ones, to have seen these fearsome lizards in the wild!

I sent them an email, asking for more details of their trip, and for permission to put this on my blog:

We have enjoyed your tales of Flores.  We had a great trip in the area, made so enjoyable by the three Americans and our local guide we had with us.  We loved them.

We had 4 nights in the Eco Lodge about 10 kms south on the coast of LB.  It was a beautiful place with an inviting pool.  A great venue to start and finish the trip.

We went to visit a local village  in the region where our guide, his wife and two children were living.  The children have to walk two hours to school, and two hours to come home.  They take a little package of rice, but other bigger children sometimes take it from them.  His tiny daughter was getting very thin with all the walking and he was worried for her.

He had started a reading class in his village to teach the children English.

Everyone dressed up and came out to sing, dance and tell local stories. It’s a bit discomforting to be the recipients of such  lavish entertainment from such poor people.

We learnt a lot from our guide.  He looked after us extremely well.  Apparently the tourist police put you in jail if your tourists come to harm.  He had been on a boat trip, as a junior guide many years before.  A Russian tourist had disobeyed the signs to stay off the crew deck area on the top of the boat.  He did this while drunk and in the dark.  He fell off and drowned.  The entire crew, including guides, went to jail, for 6 months.  Jail was in Lombok.  No money for family etc.  Very harsh.

We also went to the home of our driver where we were welcomed with local arrak.  We were humbled by the simplicity of the home.  They are very poor in Flores.  We saw the bamboo stills for the arrak on the side of the road.

We went for about 10 days on a fishing boat.  It broke down and got stranded on a reef near an Island.  The South African owner of the resort nearby came and abused us for anchoring on the reef.  He left without offering any assistance.  Our tour company was based in Melbourne.  The owners had to be contacted to authorise a replacement boat and the towage back to Labuan Bajo for the original boat.  This was not easy.  When a replacement boat arrived after dark we were taken to our campsite for the evening.

Our kayaking was between Labuan Bajo and Rinca  staying on a different uninhabited island each night.  The fishing boat carried all food and camping gear.  The crew set up camp and cooked absolutely amazing meals in a tiny kitchen on board.  They ferried them to us along with our cold beer.   We could snorkel whenever we wanted.

We had ordered two dives.  The boat from the LB dive shop met us and took us off with other divers for the day.  We dived near two small islands off the northeast coast of Komodo.  The current was about

6 knots when we dived between the islands.  Exhilarating.

It has been nice thinking back to the trip we did with No Roads.

I was going to edit this and change it, but I have in fact left it in Meriloy’s own words – much better that way.  I think the place where they did their dives is right here in this lovely bay; I still haven’t worked out the exact name…

The moorings and anchorages are filling up with Rally boats.  We are very lucky to have a big fat mooring.  Marieke III got here a bit before us and secured a slightly smaller one.  We thought we would have to anchor, avoiding coral, trying to find a good depth – not so easy – when one of the boats slipped its moorings and sailed off.  Aha!  Time to get out the boathook and for me to bustle about at the front of the boat with ropes to secure it.  Oh no not so easy… The loop of rope was very big and fat but…very short and I couldn’t heave it out of the water to get our rope through it.  

We tried various strategies and it all started to get just a bit high-pitched when brrm BRRRM!  There was the Marieke III dinghy, with trusty Ingvar saying, “I will help you Peter!”  He is such a good man; I can’t count many times I have heard I will help you Peter!  And yes most of the sailors we meet are kind, capable and helpful.  But…not all…

The mooring all looks very easypeasy,neat and tidy with our rope through the big fat wet loop...appearances are deceptive!

At 5.00 we were invited for sundowners on Thylacines, a big cat from…well we forgot to listen when they told us but Captain Jeremy is originally from New Norfolk (Tas) – hence the name of the boat.  It was, of course, a cheery gathering – lots of chat, lots of opinions.  Inspiration Lady – Canada; Nikoni – Australia; Norsa – Wales; Marieke III – Sweden and…2XS.

We all circulated, and I had a lovely time terrifying poor Norman (from Norsa) with Dragon Tales – he hadn’t seen any.  Yet!  And he is going to be very wary when he does see them…