Day 195

Day 195

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!