The Komodos
While we stayed in Labuan Bajo, on Flores Island in the Indonesian Archipelago, we had to move rooms FIVE TIMES IN SIX NIGHTS. FIVE TIMES.
This was now over a month ago and I’m still butthurt about it. It was no one’s fault but our own, but we can be forgiven I think for this – everywhere else we had visited in South East Asia, it had been the down season. Even over short distances, like Malaysia to Indonesia, in this area of the world there are rapid and pronounced changes in the seasons – whereas in Malaysia it was the shoulder season and in Vietnam it was the rainy season, in Indonesia it was fully into the dry season which, of course, coincides with peak tourism. We should have booked everything ahead of time for Indonesia, but we learned our lesson well and quickly. Looking back, I’m actually quite surprised that everything worked out as well as it did!
Definitely not the rainy season here!
It’s funny, we came to Flores instead of heading to other islands in Indonesia as we had heard from multiple people in Malaysia that the Komodos were the next frontier of tourism in Indonesia (adding to our casual approach to booking our accommodation), and that it had untouched diving that was comparable or exceeding that of Sipadan. Well, apparently we weren’t the only people that heard this – make note, friends, Labuan Bajo is anything but a frontier town. The tourism industry here is robust and alive, even if it is a bit of a pain to get to.
Our flight plan from Malaysia was a total milk run, we had to fly Tuwau à Kuala Lumpur à Jakarta à Labuan Bajo – that’s a lot of airtime to get to a place we could have almost swam to. But an unexpected treat that resulted from this was that we were able to overnight in the capital of Indonesia, the megacity of Jakarta, a place that I always wanted to visit every since I was a little guy.
When I was ten or eleven years old, my Dad was offered a job in Jakarta. At that time, I didn’t know anything about the city or Indonesia in general. I remember Mom having to point it out to me on a map in the living room at the house we had just moved into, a rare memory for someone that turned into as much of a geography nerd as I am. He didn’t end up taking it, but I was excited and fascinated by the possibilities of my life there – Who would my friends be? Would have to I learn to speak Indonesian? What would our house look like?
I now know that the answers to those questions are: other kids of expats at the international school, probably not, and it’d be nice and likely in a compound, respectively, but I never lost my fascination for the place. And it turns out that this was a good thing, as Jakarta generally stays off the radar for most people coming to Indonesia except as a place of transit on their way to Bali.
There are a couple of reasons for this. For one, the place is mind-numbingly large – the population of Jakarta is a tick over 24 million. It’s bigger than every major city in Canada combined with room to spare, and by far and away the biggest city I’d ever been to. But, as Indonesia is an island nation and space is at a premium, it’s also incredibly dense – there are people EVERYWHERE. Add to that the traffic that the city is infamous for, and you’ve got the recipe for a bit of an intimidating experience.
We only had about eighteen hours in Jakarta, so we really didn’t have time for much but a sleep and breakfast, with an eye-opening trip back and forth from the airport, but from what I saw I would definitely come back and check the place out again. That said, we weren’t exactly disappointed to leave with the promise of the Komodos on the horizon.
And did they ever deliver on that promise, especially with regards to the diving. Rachel got completely spoiled by the experience – I have quite a few dives under my belt and I don’t think I’ve ever been to a place that lives up to it. The visibility, the colours, the corals, and the life were all incredible. As a matter of fact, the only thing that tarnished the experience at all was when our dive boat broke down.
A beautiful sunrise and some 'classic marine equipment.'
They distract you with the beauty. The boat's a piece of junk though, seriously.
See, boats in Indonesia aren’t exactly ‘up-to-snuff’ safety-wise. Actually I think you could argue with conviction that they aren’t really ‘up-to-snuff’ anything-wise, other than maybe the buoyancy (and even that is questionable, at times). There are tons of stories we heard from both the internet and other travellers of boats breaking down, sinking, and stranding people without any way of getting help. Seems to be a pretty typical thing around these parts.
Before the boat broke.
We were lucky – after our first dive of the day, a beautiful pinnacle with huge sharks and eagle rays and extremely strong currents, we came up to find our dive boat floating a few hundred meters away, apparently not interested in coming to get us. We hung out for a while before another dive boat took pity on us and ferried us over – turns out the boat broke. Our ferry boat kindly called back to shore for us (our boat wasn’t equipped with a radio, apparently), and towed us to a place we could anchor and wait for the mechanic. This was all well and good, but as an hour stretched to two and then to three, we started to get a little disheartened – we were now sure that we weren’t going to get the three dives that we paid for. Fortunately, our badass divemaster Ana came to the rescue. Upon seeing our rescue speedboat on the horizon, she commandeered it as soon as it got there, saying, “f*ck it, we’re doing Cauldron.”
Super-safe dive boats.
We were pumped. We’d heard of the Cauldron from some people we dove with in Sipadan, apparently it’s pretty famous in dive circles around here. Basically, between two of the islands in the Komodos is a narrow channel. Inside this channel there can be extremely strong tidal currents (up to eight knots), but as it opens up quite wide on either side of the channel, the current drops off to almost nothing. This is exciting for a couple of reasons – for one, strong currents are like crack for marine life; the bigger the currents, the cooler the stuff you’re going to see (they saw a Megamouth Shark here a couple weeks before we were there – apparently this was the first time anyone had seen one alive in years). The second reason is that you get to ‘shotgun’ through the channel – you sit on one side of the pass, and then dive into the current and shoot through at breakneck speeds before arriving safely on the other side. It was an incredible experience, even if I did manage to completely bowl over both Rachel and Ana and send them tumbling through the pass accidentally.
When we got back on our rescue speedboat, we were beaming. Sure, we didn’t get our three dives that day, but we got to do Cauldron, we got treated to a beautiful starscape as we made our way back that night, and we did get a free Go-Pro rental out of it, so overall I’d say it was a pretty successful day (even if we misplaced all of the photos from it...).
And just another great Komodo sunset to boot.
Our second day of diving wasn’t as exciting as that, but it didn’t lack for marine life. We saw incredible things – more turtles than you can shake a stick at, sharks, rays, ghost pipefish, and the fascinating little flamboyant cuttlefish. We also got to do another famous dive here in the Komodos called Batu Balong. Batu Balong is a wall dive, but it’s on a pinnacle that’s stuck in the middle of a channel like the Cauldron’s. This meant that as long as we were on the lee-side of the wall we were protected from the intense currents, but we still got to see all the incredible sea-life that was hanging around as a result of it. It was worth the hype, believe me. There were so many schools of fish hanging in and around the coral, it almost looked like the entire wall was alive.
We could have stayed for days diving the Komodos, but we unfortunately are a) on a budget and b) had other things that we wanted to do around here.
One of the days, we rented a scooter. This was notable for a couple reasons – the first was that we took it off-road on what I would call the ‘Rubicon Trail for Scooters,’ and went to see a beautiful cavern filled with crystal-clear water, where we spent an hour swimming around and hanging out with a French-American family.
Our driver for the day...
...and his assistant.
Cave swimming. Not pictured: the highly acidic sediments at the bottom that burned my sensitive lily white skin.
The second reason that this was notable was because we got stranded at the top of a mountain forty or so (25 miles) kilometers out of town as we were watching another beautiful Indonesian sunset, when our rear tire had completely deflated. As the sun went down and darkness took over the countryside, we imposed on a local Indonesian who was kind enough to offer us bananas and cookies while he called a repair man. One thing that we notice more and more as we travel (especially on two wheels) is that the people that you meet in times of trouble can really make your trip – we had so much fun chatting with this guy and his family in broken English while we waited for the tire repair guy that it was almost worth getting stranded for (and getting EATEN ALIVE by mosquitoes).
The sunsets here are truly incredible. Even with the malaria we might have now.
Not cute.
Finally, the last thing that we had to do in the Komodos was, of course, see the dragons that the famous islands are named for. We chartered a boat from a local to take us to the Rinca, Padar, and Kanawa islands in the archipelago one day for an ungodly sum of money, only to find out upon arriving that there was a very small chance of actually seeing any wild dragons right now due to it being mating season. Apparently during the time of the year we were there all the dragons run off into dark parts of the jungle to get busy, leaving us tourists who came all this way to see their scaly hides high and dry. That said, we did see a couple little ones hanging out around the ranger station, presumably waiting for someone to chuck a chicken bone out the window, and the ranger-guided hike around Rinca was fantastic for the scenery and his knowledge of the dragons themselves. We got to see some ‘wild’ buffalo as well, so that was nice I suppose, though not exactly what we were hoping for. On a related not, we also got to see a lot of buffalo skulls kicking around the island – apparently when the dragons eat animals they eat everything, except for the skull. Upon hearing this, we were semi-okay with not seeing any adult dragons.
Some artifacts of the island's critter population.
The real jewel of that day, however, was Padar Island. Padar has a few dragons apparently, but the showstopper here is the scenery. What an incredible place – imagine many bays ringed with white sand beaches, arid grasslands, and tall rocky cliffs and mountains surrounded by the azure sea. We spent more than our allotted time here just hiking around and taking in the spectacular view, and would do this boat trip again if only to go and see this Island. Seriously folks, if you’re in the area, Padar is a must do.
Padar island...there are no words.
We ended the day with a little snorkeling at Kanawa Island before heading back to the mainland and getting ready for our flight to Bali. The accommodation situation here in the Komodos certainly taught us a few lessons, but despite the frustrations we would without a doubt come back here and do it again. The best scuba diving that Rachel and I have ever experienced, combined with the beauty of Padar and the kindness of the locals made it an unforgettable portion of our trip.
However, Rachel had just finished Eat Pray Love so we were both looking forward to our two nights in Bali to re-awaken our spiritual selves and take in some Hindu culture.
Also, eat some god-damned vegetables.
Last one I promise!
