Island Hopping into the Lair of the Dragon

The next morning, Rudy, and I made our way to the office of the boat company that we were taking to get to Labuan Bajo flores. It’s a 4 day boat ride from Lombok to Flores via Sumbawa, Rinca, Komodo, and several other islands. The first part was a 3 hour bus ride to the other side of lombok where we used the road as our supermarket, stopping at at least five places along the way to purchase everything from fresh fruit to beer to water to live chickens. Once at the port, we boarded our little converted indonesian fishing boat and set off into the sun towards sumbawa. It was quite the interesting group on board. Rudy from holland, 3 brothers (Santiago, Mariano, and Miguel) from Argentina who now live in Spain, Gabbie from switzerland, Connie from Germany, Mark from France, the couple of Mark (britain) and Lena (sweden), Paul from France who now lives in Spain, Choon from Malaysia, Greg from Australia, and 2 gals with names too hard to try and spell from holland an another with the same problem from Denmark. And the tres hermanos from argentina also had a pet baby monkey, Kuchina, that they had picked up at a market in Jakarta. Kuchina was very cute and quite well behaved, though Connie (an older woman for the crowd) showed great disdain for kuchina especially when it would randomly poo or pee on the boat. The boat was far from a luxury cruise, but we had tons of fun and the food was terrific. The engine had no muffler, so it could be deafening at times and make it difficult to sleep when steaming at night and the quarters were cramped for sleeping: we all slept on the deck, but very tight so that if the boat rocked, one way I rolled onto the barrier and the other way onto rudy, and at night had kicking wars with paul, since the mattresses were laid out so that people who were 5 feet or less wouldn’t touch, which obviously not the case for us. The first night we threw out anchor off some small island (Gili Bola) off the shore of sumbawa. The next morning we started steaming early and made it to the island of Moyo where we did some nice snorkelling and had some fresh caught fish by some local fisherman cooked on the fire for us. We then hiked a bit into the interior where we came upon a nice freshwater waterfall and some swimming holes that were good to jump into from nearby trees. It would be are only freshwater showers for the whole trip, so we stayed there for quite a while. Back at the boat we sailed onto the next island (Satonda) where we did some more snorkelling and then hiked into its saltwater lake for a swim. That night was a bit of some rough sleeping as the boat sailed all night with some decent waves.

The next morning we woke up to a beautiful beach on Gili Laba Island where we swam and hung out on the beach and also built Kuchina the monkey a little sail raft, though it wasn’t really necessary b/c she enjoyed swimming or just riding on top of santiago‘s (mom to her) head. We then sailed to red beach on Komodo island for a snorkel, which was quite amazing. An unbelievable amount of fish. From there we went to the headquarters of komodo national park and went on a hike with a guide (and a long pronged stick) to find komodo dragons (the worlds biggest lizard and highly endangered as it’s only found on komodo, rinca, and a few on flores. On the hike we found 3 big guys (at least 7 feet long) lounging in the sun. On the hike we also came across a couple herds of timor deer and some wild boar. The landscape is quite interesting b/c it’s incredibly dry and brown and very rugged. A lot like a mountainous desert, though a cool looking species of palm tree was sprinkled about and the ocean surrounding it was an indescribable light turquoise color. And of course it was crazy hot. Boating through the area was breathtaking b/c there were so many of these rugged islands with gorgeous waters around them. That evening we went off to another island (Kalong Island) for some swimming and to watch the flying foxes leave the mangroves at dusk. We just chilled on the boat watching the sunset and drinking some beers. That night one of the dutch girls fainted, but lucky for her, santiago was a doctor and the danish girl and ER nurse. She probably fainted for several reasons: she was one of those girls that is constantly sitting in the hot sun all day trying to tan, but only drinking beers for hydration, so that mixed with our hot walk in the sun and the dutch girls‘ affinity for marijuana you can see why she fainted. Of course the next day, despite our warnings she would be back out there in the sun.

The 4th morning would prove to be a fateful one. We went early to Rinca to hike there and look for more dragons. Right off of the boat, there was a large gang of macaques and the tres hermanos had hoped that perhaps Kuchina would be invited in, but she hid in santiago’s hair as the other macaques screamed at her. Right away into our hike we saw 5 big dragons all sitting together. We continued on the walk up to a viewpoint overlooking the island and the bay, going by several more dragons and a water buffalo. Near the top of the ridge, the ranger went right past a dragon hiding in the shadows and tall grass that he did not see. Kuchina did not see it either b/c for all the other dragons, she had made this terrible cry we hadn’t heard before when she would see one, recognizing them as danger. Thinking she was in a safe area she ventured off of santiago’s shoulder...and then with lightning speed the dragon struck and had poor kuchina in its jaws. There was nothing we could do but had to listen to kuchina screaming, which didn’t last long b/c it just took a few seconds for the dragon to swallow her, except for the tail sticking out for a while. And after it was all over, the dragon just stood there licking its lips with its huge forked tongue. None of the girls could watch and they all had turned away crying as did the tres hermanos who had been raising the monkey for the past 3 months. Rudy, Paul the brit, and I did watch the whole thing with some curiosity, sad as it may be, b/c it was one of those national geographic type moments. The one who it didn’t bother was Choon as she stood there not too far away clicking away with her camera. She’s Chinese malay and as Paul would say several times afterwards (he had lived in china for several months), those chinese man, they can take anything, nothing bothers them, and they can be dang ruthless. Needless to say the rest of the walk back to the boat was quite somber and full of tears. Besides the owners, Connie took it the worst crying all the time past lunch, which was interesting b/c she had been the only one vocally upset the monkey was on the boat. But we were all sad for sure b/c the little baby kuchina had been so cute. She’d just come sit on your lap and snuggle and want to be groomed and look up at you with those intelligent eyes. Rudy tried to put a positive spin on it by saying that in the long run it may have been the best ending the monkey could have b/c it wouldn’t be allowed to spain and the brothers had hoped it would be accepted my some other monkey troupe, which certainly wasn’t going to happen, and indonesia really has no rehabilitation centers anyways, so the poor thing that was bought b/c it was in a cage too small in an illegal pet market didn’t have much of a future. Initially on the first day in Komodo, we had asked the ranger how dangerous they were, and he said there had only been one human death by them. However, we would later learn this was far from true, and in fact, later that night a villager on komodo would be killed by one. And we learned that just in the past 2 months a swiss woman had been killed as well as a kid from a local village and a ranger had been attacked but survived b/c he had been airlifted to denpasar where they have the needed antibiotics (the dragons kill their larger prey such as water buffalo, deer, and boar by biting them and then waiting for the animal to succumb to sepsis a few days later). So we had a bit of a cautious and relieved laugh about the fact that we had trusted these rangers, who only carried a stick for protection, to take us around on this hike when likely their only qualification for the job was that they spoke the best english of the villagers. But we all made it out safe. I told them how when I helped with mountain lion tracking in rocky, we were out with 3 experts in mountain lions as well as 2 rangers carrying big guns for an animal that per population is much less dangerous (there are only 2,000 dragons left in the world) which was quite a contrast to this thing with the semi english speaking local with his stick. And looking back, something that was fairly alarming was how the rangers would have people crouch down in a very vulnerable position just a few meters from the dragon so that they could take their picture with the dragon.

After Rinca we headed to Kelor Island with an absolutely gorgeous beach and blue lagoon for swimming. Late in the afternoon we headed towards our final destination of Labuan Bajo. There were beers to be finished so we had a merry ole time as we motored towards LB. As we entered the LB bay, it really looked like a pirate city. Just something about it. Houses built high up on the hills and lots of old indonesia style sailboats in the harbor. The town, in my opinion, would turn out to be on the same friendliness and welcoming level as a pirate town. We were all going to sleep on the boat that night, but we went together as a group looking for a room for the next night as that’s a way to score a really good deal. But we walked and walked to many many guesthouses b/c most were just unwilling to even show us a room (as Mark said, “oh, sorry to bother you and ask you to do your job“). And the ones that we did look at were the worst value for the money of any place I have been on my trip yet. They were asking like 20 to 30 bucks for a room that had the asian squat toilet, no shower just the bucket mandi shower with cold water needless to say, and crappy beds. This is quite outrageous. Just for some perspective in yogyakarta my nice room with western toilet, cold shower, and breakfast was 3 bucks, my room in kuta with big breakfast, swimming pool, western toilet and shower was 7 bucks. Most places you can get a room with aircon for about 10 bucks. Well there was one place that had rooms for 6 bucks that was basically a prison (no fan, no windows, is that really a bed?) where I thought I would be, but then Mark the frenchman found a place for 15 bucks and asked if I’d share, so I did that. That night we had a final farewell dinner party and then went out for some drinks before retiring back to our boat.

It was a great trip for sure, and I loved it. Nothing like island hopping through gorgeous indonesian islands, stopping to snorkel and visit empty beaches on deserted islands. A trip like this was one of the main things I wanted to do in indonesia, and it didn’t disappoint. Sunsets and sunrises were always amazing and we often had dolphins following the boat around. The food was great and the group was fun, and of course interesting. By the time it was over Miguel and the danish girl had hooked up, Greg and Connie had yelled fiercely at each other (they were the only two people not in their twenties or early thirties on the trip). And Greg could be quite offensive (though I don’t know if he knew it) with one example where he said french food was absolutely terribe, which everyone in there right mind knows is not true (hmm what is australian food anyways?), and everyone backed up the frenchies on the boat, including the brit, which is of course quite unusual, but tells you how far of that statement was. But I quite liked Mark and Lena and the other mark and of course Rudy and we had lots of good laughs together. Mark the frenchman made me want to be french b/c he said that the french get 5 weeks mandatory paid leave not to mention their normal holidays, plus sick leave as well, but once you’ve been working for a while you get more. He’d been working 6 years and had 9 weeks a year off!! Mark the brit was your stereo typical brit and I think he took pride in that. He was always cracking me up. He does all his work on the computer. He somehow does advertising on the internet and then gets comission or something, so he’s been travelling around the world for more than 2 years now just going on the internet from time to time. He says he’s not working on it too hard and mainly travelling, but he still makes more than he spends each month typically. Sounds great to me. Rudy works for the dutch equivalent of the Associated Press and had been sent to afghanistan for a couple weeks before this to write about the dutch camp there. He had been getting coffee at a machine there that the next day was blown up by a missile during the attack. I think he believed the dragons were childs play compared to some of the assignments he’d had as a reporter.

Our first full day in Labuan Bajo (which is on flores island which is a predominantly catholic island, though we still had the mosques‘ call to prayer waking us up at 5am that day) we (mark the frenchie and the argentinians) went diving in the waters of Komodo marine reserve. Komodo is argued by some to be the best place to dive in indonesia, which is one of the best countries to dive in the world. It’s so good because it has some really intense currents that rip through the islands there which bring in lots of nutrients which bring in lots of little fish and then bigger and bigger fish all the way up to big sharks, dolphins, and whales. A lot of people, and the actual suggestion is to, dive komodo on a 7 or 8 day liveaboard, which I wasn’t able to do, but I still wanted to sample it, so we did a two dive day trip. I immediately noticed one of the divemasters who was a beautiful gal. Turns out Rene‘s from boulder (grew up in boulder canyon) and now spends her summers as a divemaster in indonesia and her winters as a ski bum in Vail. While I was working in Vail she was working at the the pizza place that Lucas and I sometimes stopped by for a slice after a night dancing on the town. Our first dive was a place called manta point, and it definitely didn’t disappoint! We saw 10 mantas, which are beautiful rays and much, much larger than I thought they were. Watching them flap their “wings“ is mesmerizing. The next place was called batu balong with a rip roaring current. Looked like a playboat kayaker would have a lot of fun just with the rapids on the surface. But fighting the current was well worth it. This little rock in the middle of the straight had perhaps the most fish at a dive site I had ever seen. Huge fish, medium sized fish, little fish all by the thousands. It was just a swarm of fish and full of diversity. Sharks, eels, turtles...everything. On the dive were a cool canadian couple from vancouver, which would start a string of lots of vancourverites (all pissed that the olympics are going to be there saying that there just a big scam and that the canadian government is going to have to spend billions extra just to make sure it goes)

My next job was to figure out how to get to Maumere on the otherside of flores by Oct. 5th in the afternoon as I had a boat to catch (more on that later). As it was now the evening of the 2nd and it took at least two days whether by private car or public bus, so time was running short. However, I didn’t want to just take the bus, b/c my guidebook described flores as this unbelievably beautiful island, so I didn’t want to miss it! Well...I would actually miss a lot, but I wanted to see what I could. So my book (published in 2008) said you could rent a car with driver for 45 bucks to go from labuan bajo to maumere and stop at sights and views along the way. This sounded great to me, especially if I could get even one person to share with me. But enquiring around town, I found that the asking price was 250 bucks!!! for the trip. Yikes! Even sharing with several other people would be a lot, and I’d have to find people. This was most likely driven up by the fact that komodo area has become huge for destination divers who have much more money to blow than long term travellers and are also unaware of how much things should cost, so they will pay much more. Well, I found out that Rene the divemaster from CO was taking off the next day to do it, which I thought would be perfect. But turns out she was doing it in 4 days, which was longer than I had. Mark had heard rumors that two canadian gals were looking to share a ride. I saw two girls in the street and ran up to them. Yes, they were trying to hire a car to maumere as well, but they were french, didn’t know english very well, and I think were scared at how quickly I had approached them, so that appeared to be a no go. But then I found the canadians (Ashley and Allison from vancouver area) staying at the same hostel as me. They had hired a car for 100 bucks to take them to Bajawa which is a bit over halfway where they would stay a few days (there plane left oct 8) and then take the public bus on to maumere. This sounded good to me b/c I could just leave the next day from bajawa instead of hanging out there, and they also had one other guy, Peter from Austria to share the car and Mark the frenchie also wanted to go as well, so it would be a pretty good price, and I was excited to have it all figured out. Later that night we found out that even though the girls had put down a deposit for the car, the driver had changed his mind and wasn’t going to take us after finding out a few more were going. This didn’t make sense because they had hired the car and weren’t paying by the person and the toyota kijangs can take 7 people plus the driver...and of course if used for local transportation can take a lot more than that and that’s not counting the people on the roof. When we found out the news, it was too late to do anything about it, so we would try the next morning. I woke up early and went for a walk and was able to find someone else to take us for 100 bucks. I made sure to look at the car (toyota kijang) which could definitely fit the five of us and to get a proper receipt and all that. I told him there were five of us and it all seemed to be good. He showed up an hour later like I asked him to, but when he saw the group, he said no. We were pretty incredulous, not to mention upset. We had paid the deposit and had the receipt, which is a contract. And it goes both ways. We argued with them for a bit and then they started lieing. Said they thought it was only for one person, which was clearly not the case b/c I had said there was five and then checked the car to make sure it was big enough for 5. Then they said that the car wasn‘t strong enough to handle 5 people on this road, which was obviously not true considering it was a toyota which are tough cars and has 8 seats in it including the driver. And you’ll see them pack 10 indonesians into these cars. But the guy was saying for sure that the car couldn’t handle it. I offered to show him the toyota website where I’m sure it listed that the car could not only fit 8 people but put things on the roof and pull a trailer. They lied more and more and we were pretty upset. Mark who had no set itinerary told the guy he was highly considering spending the week in LB and sitting on this companies stoop and making sure no one came for a week. It was still just unbelievable how they could agree to something, have a deposit given, give a contract and then renig on it. And then they acted like they didn’t care any way and were just jerks about it. Well we luckily found another guy that would take us for 120 bucks in a slightly bigger car. So we got to enjoy the beautiful scenery along the crazy windy road that went up over a couple mountain passes. Stopped at a few places for viewpoints including a look down at some rice terraces that looked like a perfect spider web. We got to Ruteng where we had lunch and were getting ready to move on to Bajawa when all of a sudden the driver had a massive headache and said he couldn’t go on. So we had to switch drivers and car (of course now we were put into the same car that they other guys had argued so much wouldn’t be able to take us). This took a long time b/c the new driver, who I didn’t like at all right from the start needed an hour to eat, then more time to digest, then time to joke around and just hang out it appeared. In the meantime the other headache driver was runing around laughing, joking, and horseing around with friends. Hmmm... We later saw him take the car we had originally come on and head back to LB with at least 10 indonesians, so apparently he found he could make more money doing that. When we finally got started, or so we thought, this new driver drove all around the town doing errands. Dropping off letters, picking up fruit. We were getting a bit nervous b/c we still had 5 hours to go (and it was past 4) and in these little towns, guesthouses aren’t always open past 9 or so. Then once we got on the real road he was just poking around texting while driving the whole time—all this while on a completely windy, nearly 1 lane road in a dense fog and rain. We all felt unsafe and I tried to get the phone from him, but couldn’t. I believe it was around here that Ashley said she hated Indonesia (they had just started and had only been to bali and here). We finally got there and luckily had a place to stay. We met a guy there that asked us how much we had paid to get there saying he had gone through hell to get a ride here. It was very cold up at the high elevation of bajawa and seemed like a nice town. I would have liked to stay with the rest of them b/c I liked peter, the canadian gals and of course mark and they had planned a trip to see some traditional villages and go to the hotsprings, but I needed to keep moving the next day. I took a bus this time, which was a much better idea. In the morning I saw a bit of bajawa which was gorgeous with two volcanoes towering above it, agriculture fields, and a huge Catholic cathedral. Reverting back to my philipino ways, I rode on top of the bus. After the normal passenger area was packed in like sardines a german gal, Katherine, climbed up on top and couldn’t believe what she’d been missing. The top is truly the best way to go b/c you can lie back in first class comfort, get a really good breeze, don’t have to deal with smokers, and get amazing views. For half of the 7 hour ride we had to share it with a poor tied up goat who would cry on every bump. But the road was spectacular. Winding around gorgeous mountains, valleys, canyons, and along an azure coast. The road was not only breathtakingly gorgeous but very narrow with steep drop offs everywhere, huge boulders from landslides often in the middle. One of those epic road journeys. At one point we went through what katherine called paradise canyon as it was so incredibly green and had waterfalls pouring from all sides into the frothing river below. Unreal. And we had the best seat on the bus. I got off at Moni along with the other 7 tourists on the bus. We used our group bargaining power to get a nice place for cheap. Moni is the jump off point for Kelimutu volcano with it’s 3 crazy changing multi-colored lakes. The weather looked nice so we decided to hop in a bemo while we had good weather and go to the lakes. The drive up the volcano was nice as well going by some pretty incredible rice terracing. But once we got to the entrance station we realized it was fogged in. And australian guy in the group asked the bemo driver how much the entrance fee was and the bemo driver said he didn’t know, which really pissed off the aussie and he started yelling. He needn’t have yelled, but I could see his frustration b/c he’d probably been through the same nasty song and dance of getting here in the first place and then to think that the local taxi driver who’s job is to take tourists here doesn’t know the entrance fee like he’s hoping that if he doesn’t tell the tourists and they pay more than they’re supposed to at the entrance fee, he’ll get some commission. So instead of continuing up we decided to hike down were we came upon a nice waterfall that was quite warm and we had a good swim, and that night we met a really nice man who made us a delicious local meal. Katherine, Paul (the guy I was sharing my room with from britain), and the red-headed very intelligent (and somewhat nerdy) brothers Micah and Patrick from Canada (where else but vancouver), and I decided instead of taking the bemo up early in the morning we would hike up starting at 3am. I found the brothers quite interesting and they reminded me of Sherman—it’s the read hair and intelligence. They were always doing crossword puzzles and playing intellectual games with each other. They also only spoke amongst themselves in french or spanish for practice and were also quite good at indonesian. Micah had just graduated from middlebury in vermont and Patrick had graduated from Princeton then taken some time off to first teach in ecuador then be a dive master in the galapagos, but after there year of travelling he would be starting grad school at woods hole, MA the premier marine sciences grad school in country.

We got a bit lost going up on the shortcut trail in the dark (we didn’t remember so many forks), but eventually we found the road. By this time it was starting to get light and we were fearing the clouds coming in which according to our guide book often come in shortly after sunrise. So Micah, Patrick, and I decided to jog the last 3 km’s to the top to make sure we got a view of the lakes. When we made it to the top of the volcano it was clear and would remain clear for the next couple of hours as we watched the sun light up the lakes. One of the lakes was black, one turquoise, and one greenish. The greenish one, a couple months ago had actually been blood red. Apparently these lakes randomly change colors for no apparent reason. But it was definitely a beautiful sight.

As I wanted to make sure I got transport to maumere, which can be quite irregular in these unpopulated areas, I ran the first 5 km’s down the mountain before I got a moto to take me back to my guesthouse where I was able to catch a shared kijang to maumere. Most moto drivers are crazy and fast, but this one was so slow and stopped 4 times (on a 7km drive) to light up a new cigarette! I needed to be in maumere by 4pm and I made it a bit before 2, so I was obviously happy about this, that I had made my timeline and also gotten to see a good part of flores. I couldn’t stand the actual transport in Flores, but the travel was nice because since there was only one way to go and a few key sites it was easy to meet up with cool people and travel with them, share a room with them, and go out to meals together. I had originally been a bit bummed to leave the group of Mark, Peter, and the canadian gals, but I soon found a good group the next day