Thurs 13th July
Travel day. Chilled in the pool in the morning, did some home school. Flight to Flores island, Luhan Bajo (a town) which is the jump off point for Komodo trips.
Friday 14th July
Got our boat for our two day, one night Komodo island trip. Good job only one night because lovely Henry has a dodgy tummy. Proper diarrhoea. I’ve actually given him some kid friendly block up stuff. Dodgy tummy on a boat is no fun! Poor H is always the one who gets sick!
This is our last week or so in Indonesia, sob! T and I have earmarked Flores to come and spend a couple of weeks on our next gap year together! 30 days just isn’t enough in Indo!
The boat trip was fab. We got a boat for just us but its spacious and simple. Our first stop was a small island to walk up the hill to check the view.
Our second stop was a snorkelling place with amazing coral and fish. Actually we went twice!
Our guide then took us to a small island with pink rock on it for a pic. It was a bit random cos we had to wade through what looked like fresh coral at low tide which made me feel v uncomfortable. Actually our guide wasn’t that great. Nice guy. Didn’t speak or understand much English (which I have no problem with, but its more problematic if you’re a guide!). Why is the rock pink? I don’t know. Are Komodo dragons endangered? Not sure.
Then we got on the boat to watch the flying foxes. There are literally thousands of them that come out of the mangroves in droves. A bit like the bats out of Mulu caves but these are huge beasts! All against a sunset backdrop.
We weren’t sure if we’d be able to make it to Padar island cos our boat is really small and the captain said the waves were pretty big. Padar island is famous for walking up at 5am for sunrise! (Of course, sorry kids!). He ended up travelling at 11pm for a couple of hours and it was fine, we made it! It was a bit hairy though. Very very rolly waves. I don’t like the open sea at the best of times, let alone when its scary! When I finally plucked up the courage to take a look, I could see lots of boat lights. We had arrived, phew! I had visions that family don’t know where we are!!
Saturday 15th July
I slept in my salty hair, stinky clothes so was ready to go! I have def lost all semblance of Princess, although C would disagree, haha!
So another early doors start for the kids who hated the walk up the hill (fair enough!). Gorgeous view at the top. And another sunrise.
The pics you see on ALL the blogs and socials look like this.
But the reality is, there are about 1000 other people also enjoying the ‘serenity’ of that spot. Something people never speak about. Feels so disingenuous.
Then over to Komodo island to try and spot some dragons. You aren’t always guaranteed, especiallynow during mating season when they all head for the hills! So we were so lucky to see a huge male dragon within about a minute, just walking along the path.
Then we saw it later and got this pic. TBH I wasn’t v comfortable with it, although you stand over 5m away (looks like we are close, but we aren’t). It must be so rubbish to be a komodo dragon with all these tourists all up in your face. I was surprised they even come anywhere near the tourist path.
Back on the boat to the pink beach. With the most beautiful pink coral, that you could see from snorkelling straight off the beach. Amazing. The beach, however, was full of Instawankers just taking full on photo shoots of them rolling in the sand. Not really appreciating the beauty of the beach. However, we are the dinosaurs and showing our age! We just take dorky pics like this! 👇
Last spot was to try and see manta rays, it was a really deep spot, and not the season, so we went a bit further down to a sand spit. Where we saw the most amazing coral. The best yet. There was a really strong current though which was a bit hairy.
The only thing we haven’t enjoyed about the boat is they only provide water in plastic bottles. 600mls one at that. So having spent 6 months using zero water bottles, we had to use about 20 on this boat. V sad cos you can easily provide a massive water cooler size water with a special adaptor you can get online that pumps the water out. It has really irked us. If that’s the only thing we worry about then we are v lucky!
Its been a big old schlep to get out to the Komodo islands. For a one night trip. We wanted to do two nights but we moved our schedule so they didn’t have availability. Would we do it again? 100%, it was a cool experience.
Got back, slept. Early 9am flight tomorrow morning.
Sunday 16th July
Travel back to Denpasar, chill in the afternoon by the pool. Gili islands tomorrow!
Team Mossy on the move 