Flying visit to Komodo National Park

I have a LOT of pins in my Google maps of places I’d like to visit… And I’ve had a pin in Komodo for as long as I can remember. The Komodo dragons are a fascinating species, endemic to the region, these monsters also have venom and harsh bacteria in their saliva which slowly kill their prey over several days. Most people know about them, due to the number of documentaries about them. But what is less known is how rich the oceans are around these islands too.

So we wanted to go here, but honestly, I didn’t pre-book any travel or flights here, and once we were in Indonesia, landed in Medan, I had a look at the flights. I couldn’t find any for less than £300 return, so we were resigned to the fact that we wouldn’t be visiting this time… However, I didn’t give up hope and set an alert in Google flights. When we were in Yogyakarta, the flights dramatically dropped in price to £26 each way. Once we added on bags, we got the return flights for £62 each!

The gateway to Komodo National park is the Island of Flores, just to the East, and here, most people stay in Labuan Bajo. There’s a mix of accommodation, from budget to luxury. And there’s also a huge range of ways to visit the National park. We initially looked at staying on a boat (usually a traditional boat called a phinisi) for 1 or 2 nights, and cruising around the park. But most of these trips (particularly the 2 nights ones) leave only at weekends (on Fridays) which I didn’t realise when booking the flights. Plus they are quite pricey, and safety standards are quite poor. We read a lot of blogs talking about boats sinking or having issues.

The price of the 1 day speedboat tours was much more affordable at just over £70 each. These speedboats are way faster, and just take you between the main highlights of the park. So we decided to book this instead, and went with a highly rated company called Red Whale, which we would recommend.

The only problem with booking a 1 day tour was that I had booked us 5 nights in Labuan Bajo because of the flights. So the first day here we just chilled and explored the town. We went down to the harbour and did some laundry (bad idea, as my favourite shorts were shredded up 😞) and then we headed up to a view point for sun set. Labuan Bajo faces west and looks over the National parks many islands, so the view from anywhere (the hillside, a rooftop, even just the harbour) is amazing.

The day trip to Komodo was very good though. It was busy everywhere we went, but it’s easy to see why, as the place is stunning. We were on a small boat, just 7 of us; Dave and I, a couple from Birmingham (Shirl and Sean), a guy from Cyprus (Mike) and a Chinese couple.

The first stop was Padar island with a hike up to see the famous view point which overlooks 3 different coloured beaches – a pink beach, a black volcanic beach and a standard sandy coloured beach. It was super super busy here, basically a queue of people walking up. And hot, so hot. Even at 8am in the morning. I had my umbrella to shade from the sun which helped a lot, but we were both drenched in sweat by the time we reached the top.

After walking down, our next destination was that pink beach on Padar, just a short drive over there. And wow, it was pink. I’ve been to a pink beach before in Lombok, but there’s actually not that many pink beaches globally, maybe 10-20 only, with about a third of them in Indonesia. The one in Lombok was pink ISH, but this one was proper pink!

The beach was great, but we’d heard that the snorkelling here was very good too. The beach is pink because of red corals, and we could even see it when we were driving into the beach. So after just a few snaps of the pinkness,  we instead donned our snorkelling masks and dived right in.

From pink beach we headed over to Komodo Island to see the dragons. We were told it’s not guaranteed to see them and we would need to trek into the forest to try and spot one. But there were several right by the beach and entrance point. It wasn’t so busy when we first arrived, just one other group and there was a big one chilling by the entrance. We posed for a photo with it, but I was still carrying my umbrella (folder down)… The Komodo turned around and started heading towards me. Both of us literally shit ourselves haha and ran away, but it kept coming… The guides had to step in with their sticks and keep it away, I hid behind other people…

Apparently my umbrella swinging looked like meat as the dragons here “used to be” fed… The guide told us they stopped feeding the dragons in 1994, but the behaviour of this dragon apparently thinking my umbrella was food, suggests maybe they do still get fed here unofficially…

Either way, it was pretty scary at the time haha. We waited for it to calm down again, and with my umbrella safety out of sight (Shirley held it) we tried for a pic again!

We had lunch on Komodo island and then chilled here, until another dragon snuck up on us on the beach, I nearly didn’t see it, it was only the group of tourists following it I noticed! 😅 Eeek

After lunch we headed towards “Manta point” to try and swim with Mantas. We actually saw 4 different Mantas here, they were swimming in pairs, but unlike in the Maldives, they seemed to stay very close to the ocean floor and didn’t come to the surface, so they were harder to see, and they were swimming much faster!! It was a real workout trying to keep up with them! Haha

Also I guess because it was a feeding ground full of plankton/zooplankton etc, the visibility was also not great, as the area was full of “bits”, you can see all the zooplankton in the pics.

From here we headed to a sand bank called Taka Makasar which was surrounded by stunning turquoise water. The sand also had a slight pinkish hue to it too.

The final stop of the day was “Turtle point”, although we didn’t really see any turtles… There was one big green turtle as soon as we got in, but it quickly swam out and away from the reef into the blue. So we didn’t follow it – well our guide did, but the rest of us didn’t haha, and we got separated from the guide and the boat before we were eventually picked up.

The reef here was very very good, lots of amazing coral and lots of fish, but the visibility was quite bad, and after seeing a spooky jellyfish at the Manta point, I was a little on edge and on the look out for other jellies rather than fully enjoying myself.

Ironically, even on the look out I got stung haha, only a mini one, in fact I didn’t even see it, but it was right on my lip haha, and was stinging for the whole boat ride home!

What an amazing day visiting Komodo. When we got back, we went for a drink with Shirl and Sean too, who had both had a good, but interesting day. Whilst getting off the boats, Sean slipped and banged his head and almost fell in the water – catching himself between the boats! It was very lucky actually as it could have been a lot worse… But we had a few drinks with him to ease the pain!

We have been travelling now for 4 months, and sadly we do have our return flight booked very soon. The next night was sort of our “last real night”, as the next few nights are just quick stopovers near the airports so we can get up early.

Also, when I was researching the “best” places to go snorkelling near Labuan Bajo, one place that kept popping up was Seraya island. However, this is a private island only accessible if you book the Seraya resort… I checked the price… It actually wasn’t that bad and with a last minute booking it cost us £150 for one night, this included the transfer to and from the island from our current guesthouse (taxi and 45 min boat), and it included breakfast, plus free use of the SUPs, kayaks, pool… For £75 each it was actually less than the price of the Komodo trip, so we went for it.

We arranged the 11am pick up so landed at the island at about midday, check in wasn’t supposed to be til 2, but our room was ready, so we got an early bonus check-in.

The room was incredible, a private detached bamboo bungalow, RIGHT on the beach, it was stunning, but after seeing how amazing the reef was when we first arrived, we basically just dumped our bags and headed straight out for a snorkel.

We were in the water for about 15 minutes only because the tide or current seemed to change… And what was a beautiful clear and clean bay turned into a rubbish heap… Loads of plastic got washed in, as did a lot of seaweed and the visibility changed drastically. I know that when the current changes quickly like this, it can also wash in jellyfish, so I started to feel a little anxious and just got out. Dave joined me, I am glad we did, as just after we got out we spotted a Portuguese man-of-war siphonophore, which is similar to a jellyfish, with a gas bag which floats on the surface and long slinging tentacles which go quite deep. They are rarely deadly apparently, but the sting is said to be incredibly painful! I’m so glad we missed it haha.

Fortunately, the resort had an infinity pool, so we hid in here instead before enjoying a delicious lunch of pop mie and soy joy protein bars (we checked the menu and the food at the restaurant was very expensive, so we brought enough pop mies with us to survive instead 😅).

After lunch we grabbed a couple of kayaks and went out into the bay messing around.

But we kept a getting tricked by the water…. From the vantage point of the kayaks, it looked like the water had cleared up, there wasn’t as much plastic floating about anymore, and you could see the reef clearly, so we rushed back to try snorkelling again… But back in the water, it wasn’t clear at all really, the visibility was still really bad, it actually seemed full of plankton/zooplankton, and you could barely see a metre or so from the surface. Plus there seemed to be a lot of little stingers, maybe sea fleas or something, they weren’t visible, but both of us got stung on our arms and legs a few times, so we got back out again.

We spent the rest of the afternoon chilling on our terrace, then headed up to the top of the hill behind the resort to watch the sunset and try and spot the comet again. The comet should still be visible in the sky, but we hadn’t seen it since sunrise at Bromo, despite Dave getting up in the middle of the night for sunrise most days since…

We ate at the restaurant that night, which was ok, but not worth the price. Then enjoyed the evening on the jetty, which as lit up in the evening, so we could watch the fish and take pictures of the stars.

We woke up early the next day, Dave had gotten up at about 4am to try and see if the comet was visible at sunrise, but it wasn’t 😞 still we got to breakfast about 7am and had plenty of time to enjoy our morning at the resort before leaving.

We headed back out to snorkel and at low tide, the reef looked even more impressive from the jetty. It still wasn’t clear, and we still got stung a little bit, but it was much better than the afternoon before.

We snorkelled, and then chilled in the pool again, before enjoying our shower (the bathroom was amazing too) and having one last pop mie on our terrace. Then we had to check out and wait for the boat to take us back to Flores.

I think it was a great idea to come to this resort, and it’s true that the reef and snorkelling here was amazing. There was also a mangrove on the island and we think we saw some baby sharks whilst we were having breakfast, but there was no way to access the mangrove and get closer to check. Unfortunately, the visibility here was not ideal, it was almost better looking at the reef from the jetty than being in the water! Haha, and when the current changed, it did sadly bring a lot of plastic in to the bay and a few stingers, but it was still enjoyable and definitely worth it overall, even just for the chance to stay in such a beautiful bungalow.

We got back to Flores and checked into a cheap guesthouse for the night as we were up early the next morning to fly back to Bali.

It was definitely worth coming here and visiting the islands of East Nusa Tenggara and Komodo, we just wish we had longer to explore more of the region and more of the island of Flores. What’s cool is that these islands have a completely different biogeography compared to Sumatra, Java and Bali – in fact they are different to everywhere we’ve visited so far… They fall across the “Wallace line” (which runs between Bali and Lombok). Indonesian islands to the west of the Wallace line are on the Sunda shelf (which is an extension to the Eurasian tectonic plate) and so the biogeography here is similar to the rest of South East Asia, with lush tropical rainforest, mammals like apes, monkeys, rhinos, elephants and tigers etc and plant species and flowers you find all over asia. Whereas the islands to the east of the Wallace line lie on the Australasian plate, so the biogeography here is more dry and arid, with species like those from Australasia. Even marsupials like the cuscus etc, and of course the Komodo dragon. The plants and flowers are very different too. You can see this right away as soon as you land, there is such a stark contrast – just look back at the photo island of Padar, with no trees, just dry sandy hills etc. I’d learned about this 10 years ago coming to Lombok, but it was great for Dave to see, and for him to say he’s stepped on the Australasian plate… Does that count as another continent yet?!? Haha

We are nearly at the end of our trip (for now) and have had an amazing time across the Maldives, India, Thailand, Malaysia and now Indonesia. But we do feel like we have only just scratched the surface of Indonesia. We went on a relatively well trodden path in Indonesia, but there are so many other incredible places we would love to visit here, like Sumba, Sulawesi, Raja Ampat, Kalimantan, Central and South Sumatra… And other places we saw from the plane window…