FLORES and KOMODO – made us Indonesia hungry

As you know from the previous post we cut our trip to Nusa Ceningan/Lembongan short as there was nothing left to explore. And when we were to go back to Bali, we got an email from Airbnb with a cancellation of our 5-night stay in Ubud (which we had booked in August). Well, in Bali there are so many places to stay that the cancellation didn’t make me angry even for a moment. I just went online to look for something else and accidentally came across an advertisement for Komodo trips. And I immediately thought: why don’t we go there? So I dropped my booking.com search and instead looked for flights to Flores and accommodation there and the two-day boat trip that I’d seen in the advertisement of Seek Sophie. Before Tomasz woke up I had the whole plan in my head.

He couldn’t agree more. So we got a boat from Nusa Lembongan to Bali, spent a night in a really comfortable hotel in Ubud centre right by the Monkey Forest and woke up at 4:00 to catch an early morning flight to Flores.

When we got to Labuan Bajo we both felt as if we’d landed in Africa, not Asia. The island is in a terrible state- dirty and not developed with very few decent places to stay. Since we were booking it all last minute, we didn’t have much choice of accommodation but we only needed a place to stay for one night. Since we landed in Labuan Bajo around 8:00 in the morning, we had the whole day to hang around. We started with a morning swim in the hotel swimming pool and then went for a massage, excellent coffee and dinner with live music.

In the morning next day the adventure began. We boarded an old boat with a great crew and only 6 more other travellers. We spent two days and one night on the boat. We slept on the upper deck literally under the stars. These two days were fun-packed and highlights -packed. The whole cruise took us around many island and the views were stunning for the whole two days nonstop.

On the first day we stoped four times. The first stop was Kelor Island. A short hike with a big photo opportunity.

Then we stopped for snorkelling and here I saw the best corals I’ve ever seen in my life. All was so colourful and the water was so shallow that I had to keep lying all the time not to break the coral with my fins. Unbelievable! I was in awe and had to pinch myself to make sure it wasn’t a dream.

The next stop was Rinca Island where the biggest and only attractions were Komodo dragons. Rinca Island together with Komodo Island make Komodo National Park, but as we were told there is a greater chance to encounter komodos in Rinca than in Komodo.

The last attraction of the day was watching sunset from the boat with thousands of flying foxes. These are megabats that fly to the sky after sunset.

Then the night on the boat began and it had its own attractions. 4 out of 6 fellow travelers decided to go to bed, while us and John and Morgan decided to have a little party. As there was no bar on our simple boat, Morgan suggested going on a booze run to a nearby Rinca Village. As we were anchored in the Ocean, the guide offered to take us to the harbour with a small boat and ten took us to a trusted village booze dealer. Let me just mention that the people in the village were Muslims so the guy who sold us beer and local moonshine called Arak did it all in secret and illegally. The price of beer was double of a regular market price but I guess this is the extra price you have to pay for waking him and his wife up in the first place and for the risk the guy takes:-). Anyway, this is how I got an introduction to real Indonesia by a local guide and an American fellow traveler who’d lived in rural Indonesia for a year. As Morgan told me the village was really nice and clean as there were no rats running all over the place (as it is the case in the village where she lives- 2 hours away from Jakarta)

To put in a nutshell, we had great time with great people.

We were all woken up early in the morning by the first rays of sunlight when the boat was nearing Padar Island. And we started with a hike all the way up just to get the best view of the island.

But the highlight I was waiting for the most was only to come. We finally got to the Pink Beach and it was the most beautiful and exotic beach I’ve ever seen. We were so amazed by the colour of the sand and of the crystal clear water that we didn’t even take too many pictures. It was awesome and no picture will do it justice!!!!!

In the last picture I’m holding in my hands a piece of the red coral that actually makes the beach pink by mixing with the sand.

And finally we jumped into the Ocean again and swam with huge mantas.

And here are a few shots of what it looked like on the way.