Labuanbajo – diving trip (Fri, 25 Mar)

Diving in the waters of Komodo National park is one of the big draws of Labuanbajo according to the LP. The sea really looks different there – there were almost no waves, but lots of currents, twirls and small whirlpools. This could have something to do with the shape of the seabed, but mostly likely with the currents due to the convergence of the warm Flores Sea and the cooler Sumba Strait. Such conditions are excellent for attracting interesting sea life – rich and colourful coral, a lot of plankton which in turn attracts mantas, turtles, sharks, dolphins and even whales.

We started the diving trip around 8 in the morning. The boat ride to the first diving site Tatawa Besar took about two hours. This time the group in the trip was quite big, around 20 people, divided into three smaller groups. The instructor of our group was an Indonesian guy and we didn’t have as good of a connection with him as we had had in our earlier dives in the Gilis. This was a bit of a drawback, but we got to the water anyway. The first thing we felt under the water was an amazingly strong current. Therefore, we had hard time getting our buoyancy right and keeping ourselves close to the instructor. But there was so much to see around us that any concerns were pushed aside. The coral was way more colourful than at any sites we saw near the Gilis. There were also lots of nice fish and we even saw two mantas and a few big turtles, but the coral was just breathtaking. Our total down time this time was 40 minutes and the maximum depth 18 metres.

Once all the groups were back on the boat again, the boat continued about 45 minutes towards the second dive site of the day, the Manta Point. We soon saw several mantas swimming around the boat. Mantas are large ray fish and they really look regal. We got into the water right there and most of the time underwater just watched the mantas swimming above and around us – just gorgeous! Our down time at this site was 57 minutes and the maximum depth 12 metres.

As we shared our emotions on the way back to Labuanbajo with other divers on the boat, some of the more experienced divers, who had been divining in many places around the Asia, also said that the coral and the sea life at Komodo National Park fantastically beautiful. We were really happy to have seen it, although it is a pity that we didn’t see any sharks in any of the dives.

In the evening, we had again a nice dinner with some of the people from the boat trip and from the day’s dive trip.

Rinca and Flores – Labuanbajo (Thu, 24 Mar)

We slept quite well that night on the boat, as the engine was not running and the sea was calm.

In the morning the boat took us to Rinca island, which is another island where Komodo dragons live. As we got near the visitors’ centre, we saw again a bunch of dragons sleeping there. We headed to a walk through the forest and the savannah to see the dragons and perhaps some other animals also in a more natural setting. We were lucky enough to see two more dragons in the savannah. One of the dragons was really old – the park ranger called him the Grandfather. We saw also a big water buffalo.

After visiting Rinca, the boat continued towards Labuanbajo, a small town on Flores island which was our final destination. We made a swimming stop on the road, but everybody seemed anxious to get out of the boat for good.

We got to Labuanbajo around 3. As soon as we arrived, we headed to get tickets to fly to Bali in the upcoming days, as other fellow boat-travellers had been told that the flights may not be easily available in Labuanbajo and that the prices increase closer to the flying date. We took a bemo to the airport hoping to get offers from all airlines at the same spot. But the airport was really small and only one of the airlines (Lion Air) had an office there. Their offer seemed too expensive. We had noticed an office of another airline (Merpati) on the way to the airport and so we took another bemo to get there. We got the tickets to fly to Bali in two days time and paid less for this flight than any of our friends from the boat.

Once we had the plan of how to get out of Labuanbajo, we could make plans of how to stay and make the most of our time there. We found a decent guesthouse and booked a diving trip for the next day, as the rumours were that diving around Komodo and Flores is nothing short of awesome. Once done with all the technical stuff, we could sit down and enjoy dinner with Lutz and Reto from the boat, but for change not on the boat but in a nice place on land, watching the sunset over the bay.

Komodo (Wed, 23 Mar)

The night was quite rough – there was not really a storm, but the sea was quite restless. Combined with the non-stop engine sound we didn’t get too much sleep. But fortunately neither of us got seasick.

Our boat was strong enough to make it through the night faster than we had been told – it took only 15 hours to arrive to Komodo National Park by 7 in the morning. The landscape had changed a lot compared with Sumbawa. There were lots of small hilly islands around. The vegetation was also different – more grassland than forest, the sea very clear and calm. It was beautiful place to wake up.

The boat stopped near Gili Laba island and a hike to the top of the island’s hill was on the program, but our guide convinced us that there was not much to see or do there. As we were quite anxious to see the Komodo dragons, we agreed to continue towards Komodo island without setting foot on Laba.

It didn’t take long to get to Komodo. We landed there and the park rangers took us for a walk in the forest. After walking about 300 metres, we reached a small water hole where deer and pigs would come to drink, and Komodo dragons to hunt them. And there they were – three large dragons laying lazily and looking almost like tree trunks. The Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis) looks very much like a monitor lizard, but they have massive bodies, powerful legs and long, thick tails. They are the largest lizards in the world.

The dragons do not hear very well and they can only see in the daylight, but they can smell blood very well with their tongue which they move around when they walk. They eat basically anything that moves and gets within their range – birds, deer, water buffalos, wild pigs, other reptiles, including other Komodo dragons (as soon as they get out of their egg, the baby Komodo dragons have to run for their lives up to the trees before a hungry uncle or their own mother finds them!). Buffalos are too big for the dragon to kill right away by biting its throat, but its enough to bite a leg and injure the buffalo, because the dragon’s saliva contains a lot of bacteria, which can make the buffalo sick and weak and hence an easy prey later.

They have occasionally also attacked people, mostly sleeping villagers. The park rangers had fork-like sticks with them – they use these to tame dragons if they attack by placing the fork behind the dragons’ necks, which appears to be utterly unpleasant for them and makes them run away.

The three dragons that we saw didn’t seem to have any interest in us but still we were told not to go closer than 5 metres. That was more than enough for us to see them and take pictures.

After seeing the dragons, we continued the walk around the forest and saw some deer running around. At the end of the trail, we got to a tourist information centre and cafeteria and saw several more dragons and deer just hanging around. The rangers explained that the dragons come there because of the smell of food but we didn’t quite understand what makes the deer to hang around there so freely.

Seeing these wild beasts was really the highlight of the boat trip and we were really happy to have seen so many of them.

After the walk on the central part of Komodo island the boat took us to Pantai Merah (the Red Beach). The coral and fish around there are beautiful but the water was a bit chilly. We snorkelled a bit and then swam ashore to the beach. The sand of the beach looked like regular white sand from the boat, but at the beach we could see that it had small red particles in it, which made the beach deserve its name.

In the afternoon, the boat continued some more hours and anchored in a calm bay close to Rinca island.

Moyo and Satonda islands (Tue, 22 Mar)

At 2:00 AM the boat started the journey again. This made the night a bit restless because of the engine noise, the waves and the swell, but all in all the night had passed unexpectedly well.

We arrived to Moyo island by the morning. We swam to the shore and made a short walk through the jungle to a waterfall. The waterfall was nothing extraordinary, but was still quite nice and served as a good replacement for a morning shower.

The boat continued its way and reached Satonda island in a few hours. The coral around that island is beautiful, so we spent some time snorkelling there. There’s also a salt water lake on Satonda. We walked to the lake, tasted the water – it was salty as promised. This is probably because the lake is somehow under ground connected to the sea.

After the two island stops, the boat continued towards Komodo island. This time the ride was going to take 17-20 hours non-stop and overnight. Most of the time, we ran parallel to Sumbawa island’s north coast, but as the night came Sumbawa remained further away and the sea got rougher and the sky more menacing.

The highlight of the evening was the shining plankton in the sea – it made the water shine as the boat moved though it and look like something magical out of a Disney fairytale movie.

The Boat (Mon, 21 Mar)

We were picked up from our guesthouse around 10.30 to go to the boat trip towards Flores. The bus picked up a few other tourists and took us to the office of the tour agency. We were explained that there will be two groups of 12 people and two boats. This sounded good, because according to some earlier information the capacity of a boat was up to 20 passengers. We were also given recommendations to buy whatever we think we need in the next three days because there will be no shops on the way. Even though three meals a day and drinking water were included on the tour package, we had no idea of what quality the food will be. So we got some crackers and cookies just in case and a few drinks.

Around noon our bus started towards the east of Lombok to take us to the boat. There were of course several stops on the way to pick up some more tourists and load the foodstuff for the boat trip. Looking at it from a positive angle, the bus trip gave us an opportunity to see the some towns and villages of Lombok, which looked quite similar to those in Java, except that there were less rice fields. Finally, we got to the boat around 3 in the afternoon.

The boat was really the most ascetic (Felipe would even say uncomfortable) boat we’ve ever taken for a tour. It had just two deck floors covered with plastic canvas roofing; whereas the upper floor ceiling was so low that it was only possible to crawl, sit or kneel on the floor. There were no tables for eating, nor chairs for sitting, nor beds for sleeping. At mealtime, trays with food and a stack of red plastic plates would be placed on a blue blanket spread in the lower deck; we would sit on the floor around it and help ourselves. In the evening each were given a thin mattresses, a small pillow and a dirty blanket, that we arranged in the upper deck. The toilet was basically a hole in the floor with a bucket of water next to it. When it rained, water would invade the lower deck from the sides and leak from the canvas roofing and it would get quite wet.

So all we could do was to sit on the rough wooden floor and read, watch the sea and the shores beyond and talk to our fellow travellers. There were 4 boys and 2 girls from the Netherlands. They were all about 20 years old and not very much into making friends with oldies like us. Most of the time, they spoke in Dutch, played cards and listened to some Dutch stand up comedian from their ipod-powered loudspeaker. But we made friends with the “older generation” – Maria and Mirek, a German- Czech couple, Lutz, from Germany, and Reto, from Switzerland.

The engine of the boat was quite loud, which made any conversations quite difficult, but gradually got used to it. Still it was bliss when they turned the engine off and anchored the boat in the evening in Gili Bola, off the coast of Sumbawa.

Lombok – Senggigi (Sun, 20 Mar)

In the morning, we left Gili Air, taking a boat to Bangsal, Lombok. The LP guide has a whole section on Bangsal warning that it’s a horrible place where everybody tries to come up with a scam to get you buy overpriced bus or boat tickets, which you don’t really need. Fortunately, we already had our bus ticket to Senggigi, so we were not an easy target for them. But they still tried to convince us that we should go to some other place or take some other bus instead, which we of course didn’t. After some while and after we had had to walk from one place to another several times, our bus minivan arrived and took us to Senggigi. We had made friends with a British couple, Helen and Martin, who was also going from Gili Air to Senggigi and had had really bad experiences in Bangsal when they first came. So apparently, we were quite lucky.

Senggigi is a quiet beach town on the west coast of Lombok. The road from Bangsal to Senggiggi was really nice – it ran alongside the coast and over the hills offering great views to the bay and Gili islands from different angles. When we got to Senggigi, Helen and I went to look for accommodation and we left Felipe and Martin to a cafe with the luggage. As we walked around several groups of teenagers came to us wanting to practice English and fill out some tourist survey questionnaire. We didn’t mind at first, especially as Helen is an English teacher in UK. But all after a while we grew tired of it and concentrated on the mission of finding the place to stay. In the end we wound a quite crappy, but cheap guesthouse to stay.

Felipe made friends with an Argentine couple at the guesthouse and we had lunch with them, which was a good Spanish practice for me. They had been travelling for a long time, so it was interesting to share experiences with them.

In the afternoon, we walked along the beach promenade. It was interesting to see different parts of the beach – one strip had volcanic dark sand, while on the other side of a rocky point it was white sand with old coral. The nice thing about Senggigi beach was that it was not overcrowded by Western tourists, and to the contrary seemed to be favourite place for locals to spend a Sunday afternoon having a picnic.

As we sat down to read a bit, a local guy started talking to us. He said right from the beginning “don’t worry, I’m not trying to sell you anything” but he’d like to practice English with us and his students. Soon his students, three teenage boys, joined the conversation. Hence we had yet another English lesson. The boys were a bit shy at the beginning and quickly ran out of questions to ask from us. But we could ask them about Indonesia and Lombok, so it was a bit more meaningful conversation than filling out the questionnaires in the morning. Felipe even learned an anti-tout phrase “Saya tidak ingin sesuatu” (meaning “I don’t want anything”).

In the evening, we had dinner with the British couple. They had been travelling already 8 months and had a lot of interesting stories to tell. We dropped by from a nice handicraft shop on the way to our guesthouse later. It was full of nice things that could fit perfectly into our home. The prices were quite reasonable, but once again the question of how we would carry all the things limited our choice to some necklaces and a soap tray.

Gili Air – day 4 of doing nothing (Sat, 19 Mar)

Our mission for the day was to book a trip to Komodo and Flores. We inquired about different options in the village in the previous days and decided to choose a boat tour that starts on Monday from Senggigi, a beach town in Lombok. So we booked the tour and also got tickets to get to Senggigi Sunday morning and catch the tour comfortably the following day.

We had walked to the village and back to out bungalow along the path that runs along to the beach around the island on all previous days. This time we went through the village in the middle of the island to and also came the same way. As there are no good maps, we got a bit lost on the way back, but as the island is not very big you can always count on ending up at the seaside from where you can navigate easily. We discovered that there were actually quite a lot of locals living on Gili Air (about 2000). Hence, what we had thought to be the “main village” appeared to be only the main village for tourists, but the whole inner part of the island was actually one much bigger village.

In the evening, we enjoyed the last sunset on the Gilis and had a farewell dinner at Casa Mio. As we walked home, the full moon was shining so brightly that we didn’t need our torches to show the way. Before going to bed, we sat for a while on our home beach seeing the high tide of the sea at the moonlight – what a bliss…

Gili Air – day 3 of doing nothing (Fri, 18 Mar)

We got up quite early to get to the dive shop by 8 to go to the deep dive. Our instructor was Natasha, from the Netherlands. She was nice and we felt quite comfortable to go to dive with her. The only thing that surprised us a bit was that she smoked a lot. The diving theory generally tells you that smoking before and after diving increases the risk of decompression sickness, but well, I guess she knows what she’s doing.

This time we dived at Simon’s reef. We went down to maximum 28 metres and started gradually moving upwards from there. In total we stayed down for 46 minutes this time. Again, we could see a lot of different fish –I even saw a sting ray. It was really nice. But unlike with Lutwala Dive, the Oceans 5 was a much busier dive shop. This meant that there were many more people in our boat, going down to the same site more or less at the same time with us and as at some point it got quite crowded down there.

After the dive, we went through the theory with Natasha and obtained our qualification for deep dive. This opens for us many more diving sites for future than our previous maximum 18-meter qualification.

The afternoon was really hot – so hot that we hid ourselves from heat of the day in our bungalow under the fan for a few hours. In the evening we enjoyed the gorgeous sunset in our private beach and after that headed again to Casa Mio for dinner and a movie. This night they showed the Oscar-winning King’s Speech.

Gili Air – day 2 of doing nothing (Thu, 17 Mar)

This really was planned as a day of doing nothing. We just sat on the beach, swam and read.

We drag ourselves to the village for lunch and booked a Deep Dive course with Oceans 5 for the next day. This would qualify us to dive up to 30 metres, which is generally the recommended maximum limit for recreational divers like us. We had to read another chapter from a PADI Dive textbook and do some homework. Hence, we didn’t end up totally doing nothing after all. The deep dive theory is mostly about all kinds of risks and stuff that can go wrong. It’s a bit discouraging, but of course, it’s important to know this.

We ended the day with a dinner at Casa Mio and watched the movie Black Swan about a little crazy ballerina.

Gili Air – day 1 of doing nothing (Wed, 16 Mar)

We took the island hopper boat to Gili Air in the morning. Gili Air is much more relaxed than Gili Trawangan. There are a lot less people and a lot less bars. The prices of accommodation and food are also a bit cheaper.

We walked around the island again to find a place to stay. We found a nice bungalow at Island View Cottages on the western side of the island, about 20 minutes walk from the port/centre. It’s really away from anything else, so for most of the time, we had our own private beach there, where no vendor would try to convince us to buy anything. Really nice!

The whole afternoon, we would sit in the beach, snorkel, read and enjoy life. In the evening, we headed towards the main village for the dinner. On the way, we found a nice Taiwanese family-run restaurant with a Spanish-flavoured name: Casa Mio. We had checked out their bungalows during the day but found these too expensive for our budget. There were no guests there that evening and the people of the restaurant were seeing a Bollywood movie on the big screen. We hesitated a bit, whether they were open at all, but as they advertised free wifi, we still dropped by and they gave us a nice welcome. This became our favourite place for dinner immediately – good food, nice people and free entertainment.