Komodo Island….Face to face with dragons

When I was a young boy I spent a lot of my time reading National Geographic magazine. I was mesmerized by the tales of distant lands with their mysterious tribes and exotic wildlife. The photography was absolutely amazing, and I began to dream of becoming a photographer myself one day. This was not a realistic prospect for a boy from a working-class family living in the suburbs of Cape Town, South Africa. Nevertheless, at the age of 17 I landed a job packing shopping bags at OK Bazaars and then wheeling a trolley of shopping out to a customers car and helping them load it in their boot. I was paid R 3.50 for a 4hr shift, and made a matching amount in tips on a good day. I absolutely hated the job, but I managed to save R100 over a period of 6 months, which allowed me to buy my first 35mm camera.

One of the animals I remember reading about in National Geographic was the Komodo dragon, found only in Indonesia, predominantly on the island of Komodo. So you can imagine my excitement when Akhona and I boarded a wooden boat for a two day trip to the Komodo National Park to track down some Komodo dragons. We had flown to the island of Flores from Bali two days before and booked into hotel in the port town of Labuan Bajo. It took us a day to find a reasonably-priced trip on a decent-looking boat. The main street of the dirty town is lined with mainly hole-in-the-wall travel agents who make their money by selling trips run by other boat operators at an often exorbitant mark-up. We found that going directly to an operator with their own boat was a better option. We paid RP 600 000/person for a 2 day/1 night trip including meals and water. Entrance fees to the Komodo National Park of Rp 250 000/person was excluded.

On boarding the boat at 07h30 in the morning, we were joined by 7 other travellers who had each paid a different amount to join the trip. Three German guys had paid Rp 800 000 each, an American girl Rp 700 000, an Indonesian guy Rp 1 200 000 and a Swiss couple a whopping Rp 1 500 000 each. The people who paid the most had booked through a third-party operator. Needless to say they were not too happy. Our boat had a covered cabin area with four large raised double beds with thick mattresses and storage for bags under the beds, plus sleeping space for four more people on a raised area at the rear of the boat. This was luxury when we compared it to other boats we saw along the way with 15 people sleeping on inch-thick mattresses on the floor. We were told that we would be doing the tour in reverse as that day was a public holiday and the cost of entrance to the national park would have been much higher.

Our first stop on the trip was Kanawa island for a bit of snorkeling off the beach after paying Rp 10 000/person. There were lots of fish around the jetty area, mainly because a group of Chinese tourists were throwing pieces of bread into the water to attract them so that they could take photo’s swimming among them. As many Chinese cannot swim, they usually wear orange or yellow lifejackets and hang onto other flotation devices. They tend to travel in large groups, and stick together wherever they go. In the water they have a bad reputation amongst other travellers for hogging the area, screaming and shouting and letting their legs dangle down into everybody else’s shot of marine life in the area. We dread the arrival of tour groups to the the we are trying to enjoy as chances are your experience will be negatively impacted by what is considered by many to be selfish, thoughtless behaviour.

After about an hour we hopped back on the boat and headed for Manta Point to try and find giant Manta rays. The voyage took at least two hours and when we arrived we could see at least another 7 boats sailing around looking for these often elusive creatures. After about 20 min we saw another boats occupants jumping into the water and swimming like hell after something…We knew they must be chasing a manta. I was the first one in the water and immediately below me I spotted a 2m wide manta skimming along the seabed. I gave chase and almost collided with our boat as I followed this beautiful, graceful ray. I filmed it for about 5 mins before it disappeared in the gloom. Another four of our group managed to glimpse the ray, but it moved so fast that the others missed it. To our annoyance our captain then set course for our next destination instead of spending more time looking for more mantas. The crew spoke virtually no English, so we could not really take action.
Sadly Akhona didn’t get to see this amazing manta, but we hope to see them in Maldives in July.

Our next stop was Padang Island, which we arrived at 2.30pm. Here one has to hike up quite a steep mountain in order to view the famous three beaches from the summit. It took us about 45 mins to get to the viewing point, and once there we realized that it was the completely wrong time of the day to get a really good shot. The ideal time would be between 11h00 and 13h00. This was the first negative impact of not following the usual schedule of visiting Komodo and Rinca on day 1, as Padang would usually be your first stop on day 2, with perfect light. We managed to get so-so shots as a result of the lighting. We ended up hanging around until 8pm at this location before we departed for our overnight destination. En route we ate a local supper which wasn’t too bad. We went to sleep at around 21h30. I did not sleep that well.

The next morning we were up at around 07h00, and the boat started its voyage to Komodo Island. There was a sense of expectation in the air as we ate a breakfast of fried banana’s, chocolate spread chocolate and green banana’s. We arrived at the park at around 07h30, went through the payment process quite quickly and were assigned two guides for our group of nine. We had to pay another Rp 80 000 per guide on top of the Rp 250 000/person entry fee. Luckily we were the third or fourth boat to arrive, and we set off with our very informative English-speaking guide. After around 10mins walk we came upon our first Komodo dragon, lounging in the sun. He was pretty inactive as he was still warming up, and our guide shot a group shot and individual shots with him in the foreground. He started rousing with all the activity and I shot some really cool shots.

We moved on and then came upon another sleepy giant near to the beach. I managed to shoot him yawning, which is apparently hardly ever possible. Shortly afterwards we saw a larger dragon on the move close by, and it was amazing to see him walking and flicking his tongue looking for prey. At times I wonder if he didn’t consider us as potential prey. He carried on down towards the other dragon, and for a moment we thought that they would confront each other and fight, but he changed direction and conflict was avoided. We considered ourselves lucky to have seen a walking dragon, and a yawning dragon so easily. We then headed back to the visitors centre where we bought a plate of noodles and drinks to supplement our meagre breakfast.

Next stop was about an hour away at the famous Pink Beach, which Akhona had been going on about for months. She was determined to get some cool shots on the beach, and in order to get my camera gear and drone to the beach we had to pay Rp 20 000 for a 3min boat trip. As soon as we got there I flew the drone and did a quick 10min shoot with Akhona as we could see a Chinese tour group making their way in bright orange lifejackets. Once they arrived they would take over the beach and any chance of a cool shot would be gone, as Chinese have a tendency to walk into your shot and not move even if you try to indicate you need a few seconds to shoot. We finished in the nick of time…soon Pink Beach was awash with orange life vests 🙁

Our final stop was to be Rinca island, which also falls within the national park, and is supposed to have an even larger population of Komodo dragons. It took another two hours or so to get to Rinca – we arrived there about 13h45. We showed our tickets and were once again allocated two guides at a cost of Rp 80 000 per guide for our group. We immediately saw nine dragons hanging around outside the camp kitchen. It was not the ideal setting to photograph in, but I managed to get a few good shots of the dragons who were further away from the buildings. After that we went on what I imagine was the short hike up to a viewing point. No sightings other than a few water buffalo and a small tree snake were made and the circular route. After Komodo it was a bit of a let-down, but I was still a happy man 🙂

The trip back to the port took about three hours, during which time we slept most of the time, and chatted to our fellow travellers the rest of the time. For the price we paid we found the trip definitely worthwhile, but if we had paid much more we would have been less happy with the basic food and lack of communication skills of the crew. We saw boats worse than our on our trip, and we saw some far better boats as well, which I imagine cost closer to Rp 2 -3 million per trip per person. We got a bargain price for a not-to-bad experience – the people on one of the boats we kept on meeting on shore were less happy. I got to see Komodo dragons and a manta ray so it would be hard to complain…The adventure continues 🙂