Around 04:30 I started to see the huge mountains on Flores
rising up out of the mist as the sun slowly came up and it was a very
impressive sight that excited me and woke my sleepy brain.
We arrived at the southern side of Rinca Island around 06:00 to the
tropical smells of SE Asia and entered a small channel between Rinca and Nusa
Kode where we picked up a mooring.
I read the diving here was spectacular and even though I was
very tired, I kitted up and jumped in and went snorkelling for two hours. The
water was bloody freezing at 24c due to the very deep 2000m+ ocean pushing up
against the Island sending the cold nutrient rich water to the surface. The
normal surface water temperature here is around 30 – 32c.
The coral and fish life were pretty good, but not awesome. I
was tethered to the dingy and just drifted with the strong current. It was great
to get in the water, but after a couple of hours I started to get cold and it
was time to move on.
The air was full of tropical smells and there were lots of
exotic bird sounds. We saw a Timor deer and a group of monkeys on the beach and
suddenly a Komodo dragon walked out of the bush and down to the water’s edge
where he cooled off laying down on the wet sand.
At 15:00 we headed off to Ginggo, another bay on the west
coast of Rinca Island about fifteen miles away arriving around 17:00. The Islands of
the Komodo National Park are all very dry and rugged and look very parched at
this time of the year at the end of the dry season.
For dinner we cooked up a nice roast beef and we were both
sound asleep by 8pm.
Track Sirocco’s
progress
No comments:
Post a Comment