'Ere be Dragons (Part II)

I’ve got an afternoon here in Labuanbajo with nothing to do (shock, horror), so was hoping to be able to do a little blogging, but unfortunately the sole internet connection apparently only works in the early morning. This post is thus being written in my little notebook from the comfort of an armchair on my veranda overlooking the Flores Sea. If you’re reading this I’ve obviously managed to retype and load it.

I may get lucky, but in all likelihood I won’t be able to upload any photos. I’ll thus try to elaborate on my descriptions of where I’ve been and what I’ve been up to; this assuming that you actually read my ramblings and don’t just scan through the pictures going: "Ooh, that’s nice...". Heck, maybe I don’t read the emails you all so kindly send… maybe I just scan them in the hope you’ve included a note to the effect you’ve deposited USD xxx in my bank account. So far no luck on this front, but there’s still a month to go...

I mentioned briefly in my last post that I’m now on the island of Flores, specifically the town of Labuanbajo, a base from which I’ve been exploring and diving around the Komodo Islands. Flores is the largest of a string of islands known together as Nusa Tenggara. These islands stretch from Lombok in the west (next door to Bali) across to East Timor. I’m roughly in the middle right now. The Perama boat from Lombok took 3 days and passed along the northern coast of Sumbawa Island for most of the journey before arriving at Komodo Island, as I said before. From Komodo it was a few hours sailing, past Rinca, on to Labuanbajo.

The 2 days of diving I did at the sites around Komodo and Rinca were spectacular and warrant my forking out for another 3 days worth. The diving is so good, and so different, because of its situation. The hundreds of small islands in this chain form a sieve through which the warm waters of the Pacific and the cooler waters from the depths of the Indian Ocean are forced and mixed. This mix has developed an amazing array of marine life, and also causes incredibly strong currents that make the diving much like an underwater rollercoaster ride!

As a break between my two stints of diving I spent two nights out on a small island called Seraya. There really wasn’t much else to do there except enjoy the gorgeous views from my bungalow on the sand and chill. Okay, okay… I confess… I was actally planning on doing some fishing (but don’t tell the folks at the dive shop – fish are our friends!), but this is what happened:

Imagine my delight when I arrived on the island to find a perfect shallow sand bar stretching out from the beach for 70m before dropping off into very deep water, and a quick look via snorkeling revealed huge schools of jackfish and kingfish patrolling the area! This is what I’d been lugging my flyrod around the world for. I quickly fitted my rod together, pulled out some line, selected a perfect little deceiver pattern and prepared to cast. At that moment a school of jackfish was moving toward me, I could even see their scythe-like tails through the clear water! I had my fly arching over them in a second and was about to land the perfect cast when… (insert your choice of expletive here – just make it a good one!). My rod snapped. Right at the base, making it irreparable. Hell, insert another expletive for good measure!

But, we’ve always got a silver lining filed away somewhere. This time it was that I got to do some awesome snorkeling along the drop-off, even coming face to face with a spotted eagle ray. And I finally got to make some real headway into the adventures of "Hai mian bao bao" (SpongeBob Squarepants).

I really wish I could get some photos uploaded to show how beautiful these islands are. They’re not the palm-fringed, tropical type you see in postcards. The land is much drier, almost barren. But the sea is the most exquisite blue... rather "all" the most exquisite "blues" you can imagine. And the sky is clear all day, with equally dramatic sunrises and sunsets at each end.

It wasn’t the scenery, or even the diving, that first lured my thoughts to these islands though. That honour firmly belongs to the dragons. (And the fact that I’m still bumbling through The Origin of Species is honestly coincidental in its timing). I’ve always wanted to see those massive lizards, and it feels really good to have achieved one of those "lifelong" ambitions. The Komodo dragons really are as impressive as they’re made out to be. The males I’ve seen have been around 3m in length, but its their girth that I find so impressive. A monitor lizard can grow to 2m, but that’s where the similarity ends, these guys are the Os du Randt of lizards! It was good to keep in mind that they eat over 40kg of meat each week and have killed humans, locals and tourists, even recently. Scary stuff, and I’m not even going to get started on the Wild Chickens...

I’ve still got 4 awesome days left here, but it’ll be sad to leave it for the hustle and bustle of Bali. But I’m also excited to see what adventures Woozle and I will get ourselves into...