Day 190_to_195

We’ll spend next days in Labuan Bajo, Flores. Mostly the idea is that Maria gets her Open Water title, and then, to dive all together!

It’s a short flight in an old, small airplane, but it doesn’t move at all during the trip! It’s comforting because we are flying with Lion Air. The same company that had a plane crash last October during a domestic flight near Jakarta. However we reach the airport safely.

When we finally arrive to the village we are a bit in shock. We were not expecting it to be so “less developed”. We cannot find our hotel, and the worst, we don’t see any proper building that could be a hotel. The houses are small wood shacks. Finally we find it, it’s the last building of the village! It’s small, but it faces the sea and it’s clean enough. Those are the views from the terrace:

Merry Christmas! Today we’ll be the strangest Christmas ever. It is around 30 degrees, far from home and we’ll not get the typical feast with our families! However we miss our loved ones, it feels supecool to spend Christmas in Indonesia!!!

Maria will spend the morning at the school. Meanwhile we will hang out searching for a plan for the next days. We want to see the Komodo Monsters so we need to get a safe boat. On our way to an small agency we are surprised by a siren. It’s constant, getting louder and it’s frightening us (tsunami?). When we get to see what’s going on we can’t help smiling. It’s some kind of Christmas parade!!!! The locals are trying to celebrate Christmas in “our way” (USA way) even if they are muslims! Everyone with a car or a bike is outside in the parade kind of dressed like Santa Claus, honking and cheering to the people in the street. Amazing!

After our investigations to get to Komodo we don’t have good news. We have been speaking with Dorothy and Isa from Neren Diving School about it, an they recommend to us to avoid using any local agency. It’s just too dangerous. During the last month some boats sank, the last one just some days ago and they could not find everybody. Thinking about what to do next we go to have our Christmas’ lunch with Maria. It’s a special day so we’ll have a special menu! I can’t rememeber the last time we ate so good.

Instead of our typical “turrón” we’ll get some exotic deserts!

Afterwards we walk a bit around the village ‘til we see the sunset.

Next day it’s Maria’s first day underwater! And what a day! She does a great work, she loves it and she get’s to see huge mantas the very first day diving! Who can say that?!?!!? It’s quite a long day for her, she comes back on the ship right after sunset!

Meanwhile we have a lazy day at the hotel. It’s really hot outside and we have some things to work on the computer. We still have to figure out what to do with the Komodo dragons! At least we get to see a nice sunset.

That’s a vulcano!

Today we’ll dive all together!!! We are superhappy and excited because we haven’t seen mantas yet!

Here, before getting ready to dive with Maria.

We are so busy talking that I’m not taking a lot o f pics, sorry!

Diving near Komodo is a bit more challenging than in the other places we have been. You can feel how it can be really dangerous in just a second or a oversight. The currents here may be crazy strong, so strong that we are able to see them even from the ship!

However it worths it and we feel safe with Nacho, our instructor. Today we get to see nudibranchs, a crazy amount of Hawksbill turtles (some of them really big, we even see one that easily was 1.5m long), garden eels, swimming crabs… Our last dive is in Manta Point; geographically the site is directly on the channel connecting the Indian and the South West Pacific oceans, each hosting distinct underwater climates that come together to create an ideal environment for Manta Ray. We drop down just ten metres to find a sandy bottom not heavy with coral but with good visibility and a reasonable current. That’s our first dive with current and it’s funny. You just need to allow the water to carry you, but when we want to stop to see the mantas it’s a bit hard. We use just one finger to hold us because we can’t touch the seabed!

Mantas are incredibly smart marine animals with large brain capacities and no barbs; this makes them harmless to humans. They’re aware that we’re in their territory but don’t feel threatened, we’ve been told that they are notoriously friendly and curious. After a couple of passes the Mantas get more confident and begin circling near us, flapping their giant wings and even dropping down to “greet” us. Their huge bodies (4-5 m width) seem unaffected by the current while we are struggling to not been carried away! Looking directly into the eyes of a friendly Manta Ray is a dream. It will look to you back!

Next day we’ll do 3 more dives are awaiting to us! It will be the first ones as a Open Water Diver for Maria!

Our first diving point will be Mawan, we expect more Manta ray encounters there!!! Again we get to interact with this gentle giants and all the other amazing fauna living here!

On our way back we are lucky enough to see some dolphins!

When we are back to land we need to get money, and that’s not an easy thing to do. The ATM are empty!!!!! After trying in 3 or 4 we are the ones who empty this one!

We are rich!!!!!!!!!!!!! Kind of… here the currency conversion is 15.7000 IDR (Indonesian Rupies) are 1€ !!!!! yesss 15,7K IDR = 1€ . Back to the hotel we do what any completely normal and adult person will do with this amount of notes… throwing them on the bed!!!

This is our last day diving in this paradise! But first we’ll go to Rinca to visit a lovely creature… The Komodo dragons!!! Finally we decide to go with Neren Diving school, as we already know them and we felt safe all the time. Last days we have been speaking with other agencies and it has been disappointing. We get to know more details about the boat that sank few days ago, and it’s not calming at all. One says that the two disappeared could have been eaten by the dragons?!?!?! It’s an easy choice.

Some pics from the sailing to the island. Rinca and Komodo Islands bracket a north-south passage between the Indian Ocean and the Flores Sea. Due to the large bodies of water and narrow gap, the waters between Rinca and Komodo are subject to whirlpools and strong currents… We are really slow on the boat, but that allow us to get some nice pics!

Finally we reach the island! Rinca is a good place to see the Komodo dragon in its natural environment with fewer people to disturb them. In Komodo they are bigger but it’s a bit spoiled. The Komodo dragons are the largest living specie of lizard, growing to a maximum length of 3 metres and weighing up to approximately 70 kilograms. Their bite is venomous and since the dragons eat carrion, they transmit all kinds of infections to their victims. To make it even more fun, they are also cannibals. Lovely creature! An untreated bite will be deadly and there have been several attacks towards humans.

Biologists estimate that less than 5,000 Komodo Dragons exist in the wild; around 1,300 are thought to live on Rinca Island. Komodo Dragons are known to exist only in five places in Indonesia: Gili Motang, Gili Dasami, Komodo, Rinca, and in Flores!

At some point we are not allowed to walk alone anymore, we get a nice ranger provided with a stick as a guide. He’ll protect us if we need it. Yes with a stick…

A juvenile walking around

It’s smelling meeeeeeeee!!!!

A local having a bath:

And now it’s time to dive! In our first one the visibility is incredible, and the coral colours with the touch of the sun shines are just breathtaking. It’s so beautiful that I even cry. It’s seems that we are in a giant aquarium!!! We get to see a quite big bumphead parrot, a tuna, a school of giant trevallies, some shaded batfish, trumpetfish and a blue dragon between other more common tropical fishes!!!

On the way out Maria has some trouble, she is experiencieng pain everytime we get out (when we are not deep). But this time is specially painful, so she decides that will be the last dive. The next one should be in Batu Bolong, we’ve told it’s the best of the best. At the surface, we can just see a small rock with a hole in it, but underwater it seems to be a giant rock going deep into the blue to 70m. This rock is full of all kinds of marine life with an amazing hard and soft coral cover. They explain to us that the currents are so strong in one side of the wall that usully big whirlpools are present on the sides; those may suck you into the deep and you’ll have big problems then. We should be ok if we follow our instructor carefully.

When we arrive we see a group of divers already in the surface, but their boat is not there to catch them. Inmediatelly they start being dragged by the strong current. It’s incredibly frightening how fast they are moving. Nacho starts shouting to the other boats to get them, and finally when they are really far away the boat reaches them. Now we are afraid, we know we are ok with our instructor Ardi, but those are really strong currents. Nacho gets into the water to check if we may dive here. It seems today is not the day! It’s too dangerous, so we just go somewhere else.

Getting ready for the last one…

It will be in Tatawa Besar, the second best diving site here. The visibility it’s not soo good as in the previous one, but it’s still good. Then suddenly I see it coming and disappearing in the blue; fast as a lightning. A SHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARK!!! I get the instructor’s fin and I start doing histerically the shark sign for him and Tià, bubling a lot and pointing where it was. Nothing, it’s just gone. I’m the only one who has seen it, and just for a second. I think it was a black tip, but I can’t be sure. It was too fast.

We continue, but now I¡m just looking to the blue searching for sharks. Anyway we get to see some moray eels, lion fishes, surgeons, Hawkill turtles and antias between others.

That’s the crazy face you have when you get out of the water screaming SHAAAAAAARK SHAAAAAAAAAAARK! I’ve seen a SHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARK!

Happy face after a nice dive!

Arriving to Labuan Bajo

It’s our last night in Labuan Bajo! Tomorrow we’ll fly back to Bali to spend there New Year’s Eve!