Komodo

Our last week in Indonesia was spent on the island of Flores, an outrageously beautiful island that turned out to be my favorite one of all the ones we saw. We flew into Labuanbajo, a tiny town where we organized a 2-day tour to Komodo and Rinca islands. These islands are home to Komodo dragons, the biggest lizard in the world - they can get up to 3 meters in length! Their saliva contains many strains of poisonous bacteria which ensure that if their bite doesn't kill you, a bacterial infection will do the job in a couple of days. Komodos are perfectly content to wait it out. They are patient like that.

We sailed with our really friendly captain, Mat, (and his first mate) for several hours among a string of pretty little islands before making our first stop on Rinca island. This is Captain Mat:



A guide took us on a 2-hour hike across Rinca island to try to spot Komodos and water buffaloes. We saw Komodos almost instantly, huddled around the cafeteria, attracted to the smell of the food. It turns out that Komodos like Indonesian food too. (Surprisingly, we also saw lots of monkeys hanging about. No one ever mentioned there would be monkeys here!)

Our guide explained that Komodos are deceptively slow and clumsy-looking, when in reality they can run at 10 km/hour when they want to. They can hunt any animal on the island, including the poor water buffaloes, whom I felt most sorry for, for some reason. Although they don't tend to attack humans very often, recently a few victims have included several farmers and children from the villages on the island, so he carried a big forked stick just in case. (Although after hearing all of that, I can't say I was very reassured by a 'stick.') Then he told us that an anti-bacterial medicine might save your life if you did get bit by a Komodo, but they don't keep any on the island. Oh.

So, when they say "guide," what they really mean is "man who will take a sick pleasure in scaring the shit out of you."

Soon it became clear that the situation wasn't quite as dangerous as he made it out to be. Halfway through the tour, he got a sneaky little smile on his face as he asked us if we wanted to touch a Komodo. 

"For 100,000 rupiah. Special deal for you. You no tell." 

At first we agreed -- $10 to touch a Komodo, who could turn that down? -- but then we decided that the Komodo probably wouldn't want strangers touching it, and we didn't want to encourage this practice, and we politely told him so. Oblivious to our good example, when we later came upon a sleeping dragon, he lifted up its tail and stroked it affectionately. But then, strangely, at the end of the hike, he apologized for making us this offer and tried to say that he was "just joking." Perhaps we managed to do a good deed after all?

Our Rinca guide, contemplating a sleeping Komodo:

As for the water buffaloes: they were surprisingly cute, for an animal that spends all its time lounging around covered in mud and flies. (Just imagine it wiggling its big pink ears around.)

We sailed along for several more hours, and Captain Mat came out every once in a while to give us platefuls of fruit. Since then we have frequently wished that we could hire Captain Mat to accompany us around the world. His only job would be to bring us fruit every few hours. It would be great.

We snorkeled twice that day. I haven't snorkeled since I was little, and I forgot how incredible it is. I particularly enjoyed staying perfectly still for a few minutes, so that eventually I would be surrounded by hundreds of fish, just swimming along, doing their fishy business.

The next day we set off for Komodo island to see more Komodos. I thought this would be the better of the two islands, being the one that the dragons are named after and all, but actually it turned out to be pretty dull. In our 2-hour hike, we only saw a few Komodos, and no other animals at all. In fact, the most interesting part was our guide, "Jack," a 23-year-old guy born in the farming village on Komodo island.

This is Jack (on the left):

At first we found Jack a bit irritating because his English was almost completely incomprehensible. Not a good quality for a guide. But then he started asking us about our lives in that overly personal way that Indonesians often do ("How old are you? How long you together? You married? You love?") and this led to quite a surreal conversation.

When he found out that we were from America and England, he started talking excitedly about Titanic. "Like Jack and Rose!" he exclaimed. I was amazed that even someone born on Komodo island had seen Titanic. Is there anyone in the world who hasn't seen this movie? He asked us lots of questions about the actual Titanic voyage. He seemed to have no idea what an iceberg was despite seeing the movie. He also expressed astonishment that a ship could hold 1,500 people, the entire contents of his village. As we walked, he kept repeating the name "Jack" to himself quietly. We later realized that that's probably where he came up with his English name. So cute.

He then started asking us about the size of our countries - "Which one bigger, America or England? England or Canada? Canada or America?" He also asked to try on my glasses and was disappointed when they made the world blurry for him. 

In short, he was exactly what you would expect someone born on Komodo island to be like. It was my first time meeting someone with so little knowledge of the outside world. I loved it. 

Jack's little brother really wanted to take a picture with me:

The end of the tour took a sad turn when Jack asked us if we had any malaria medicine. Thinking that he was just trying to make sure we were protected, we said yes, but then instantly regretted it when he continued, "I malaria. You give me medicine? I malaria. Please." He mimed the intense shivering that you get during a malarial episode. He said that he went to a doctor in Bali who gave him medicine, but the medicine was no good. I wondered why any doctor would claim that medicine would be good for malaria, when in fact there is no cure. Once you get it, you have it for life, with recurring episodes every few years. I made a mental note never to go to a doctor in Bali.

We tried to explain that our medicine is only preventative, and that it doesn't do anything if you already have malaria, so it wouldn't help him. But he didn't understand and he just asked us again. (YOU try explaining the word "preventative" to someone who doesn't speak much English.) We didn't want to just say "no" and have him think that we were heartless bastards, so we asked him to come with us back to the boat so that we could have Captain Mat, whose English was pretty good, translate it to him. This turned out to be an even worse idea, since he followed us to the boat thinking we were taking him there to get him the medicine. He kept thanking us on the way there. Ack.

When we relayed our message to Captain Mat and asked him to translate, he spoke to Jack in Bahasa Indonesian for a little while, and then turned to us and said, "I told him that he needs to go to Bali and have the malaria diagnosed by a doctor and get medicine from the doctor." That wasn't what we'd asked him to translate, and in fact it was quite a bit more harsh than what we wanted to say. Frustrated, we asked him again to translate our exact words, and he spoke to Jack again. He claimed to relay our message this time, but I'm not sure he did. Jack seemed very embarrassed and quickly left after that. So now I guess he thinks we're heartless bastards after all.

It seems really fucked up that people should be born on an island with tons of malarial mosquitoes, with no bug repellent or preventative medicine (not to mention deadly Komodos that eat village children). After this whole episode, I felt really quiet and melancholy for a few hours. And after that we started taking the issue of mosquitoes quite a bit more seriously. Funny how having someone beg you for malaria medicine will do that.

Our last stop was snorkeling to look for manta rays. This was quite different from the snorkeling we did before, which was next to the shore of an island. This time, Captain Mat had stopped the boat in the middle of the ocean, with no islands around. We had sailed through rough seas to get here, and the waves were pretty big in the spot where we stopped. The ocean floor was about 10 meters below us. Scary shit.

As we swam behind Captain Mat to find some mantas, I was feeling a bit apprehensive about the whole situation. He was swimming quickly through the waves to look for them, and as I struggled to keep up with him, I started to lose confidence in my ability to stay afloat, even with fins. I was also worried about water getting into the breathing tube, with such high waves. It turns out that I am a huge wimp when it comes to being in the middle of the ocean.

Just then, Ross pointed down at the ocean floor, and I was shocked to see a shark. A fucking shark!! We were both so busy freaking out and going "HOLY SHIT IT'S A FUCKING SHARK" that we totally forgot to take a picture. While this experience was really cool, it didn't do anything to calm me down.

After a few more minutes of intense swimming, we finally saw a manta ray on the ocean floor. It was much bigger than I expected, and looked like it was having a much easier time in the water than I was. At that point I decided, fuck it, I've seen my manta, I'm done with this craziness. I swam back to the boat and was seriously relieved to be out of the water. Ross stayed out with Captain Mat another few minutes.

When they came back in, Ross showed me his arm - he had been stung by a jellyfish! In the last 2 hours, we had hiked with Komodo dragons, been begged for malaria medicine by a person born on Komodo island, snorkeled with a shark and a manta, and been stung by jellyfish. What the fuck.

After that we were exhausted, and when we started back towards Labuanbajo, I was okay with the tour being over. It's funny how tiring it is to spend 2 days having someone parade you around exotic islands.

And that is the story of our trip to Komodo and Rinca Islands. Hopefully I will have written Part 2 about our time in Flores by tomorrow. What a truly insane part of the world.