After a beautiful night’s sleep, while we were having
breakfast, a young Komodo dragon walked down the beach for several hundred meters,
regularly stopping and raising its head to sample the air with its long-forked
tongue before disappearing back into the bush.
We departed Ginggo around 09:00 and headed to the ranger’s
station at Lou Buaya on the north side of Rinca Island to pay our park entry fees.
This took us around three hours sailing through the strong currents, whirlpools
and fast over-current's.
Along the way we started to see many small fishing boats and
beautiful Phinisi’s, traditional hand-built luggers
from Salawisi used for dive charter boats.
We anchored in the channel at Lou Buaya among many other
charter boats and went ashore in the dinghy. Right away we found a guide who
took us up to the ranger station. It was bloody hot and the Island was really
dry.
The CM93 charts are
not very accurate in this location, but Navionics were spot on.
After a long walk up the cow shit covered dirt track, we
reached the rangers station and went to pay the park entry fee. Komodo national
part is a Unseco world heritage site, and therefore I was expecting to find a
well-managed facility, but hey, this is Indonesia and it was a bloody shamble.
The official selling the tickets didn’t really have any idea
what he was doing and the fees and charges were absolutely ridiculous and off
the dial. When we complained, he even suggested we just change the dates on the
tickets each day.
For example, we got charged a parking fee for the boat, an
entrance fee for walking in, wild animal protection fee, a guide fee, and a
daily park fee. There is also a daily fee for each camera you possess, a daily
snorkelling fee, a daily diving fee and the list went on and on and on and on.
The fees were much higher for foreigners and much much
higher on weekends, so we paid about AUD$70 and got the hell out of there. We
figured it might be better just to hang out at the outer Islands for a few days
and keep a low profile as most other cruisers seem to do.
There has been talk of closing some of the park in 2020, and
the latest news release was they were thinking of charging USD$1,000 per person
per day which would see the park totally empty except for the odd Russian
billionaire and all the Phinisi charter boat operators would go out of
business.
The corruption, the pollution and the political
mismanagement are some of the major issues with Indonesia that even the
citizens don’t understand, but anyway we are here now and we will try and enjoy
this beautiful place while we can.
After paying for a handful of tickets, we bolted out of the
office and went walkabout with the guide to try and find a few Komodo dragons.
It was hot as hell and we forgot to bring any water. Right
away we saw a few big dragons hanging around in the shade of some buildings.
They are very prehistoric looking animals and the whole area is a bit like
Jurassic park.
We came across a Komodo dragon nesting site and there was a
large mother protecting her clutch of 30 eggs buried in the warm soil. The
incubation time is around six months, and the young 30cm baby hatch-lings will spend
their first couple of years up trees to escape their predators.
We walked to the top of a high hill with a beautiful view of
Sirocco below and admired the view in the shade of a small gazebo with a small
dragon resting in the shade underneath.
There were a lot of monkeys hanging around the wooded area
and we saw Timor deer and there were cattle and buffalo crapping all over the
place.
By now were knackered and had seen twelve dragons and we
were ready to head back to the boat. Once back on board, we immediately pulled
anchor and headed for Labuan Bajo, the largest town in the area.
Here we were to meet Putu’s brother’s best mate who owns a
brand new Phinisi and it was a good opportunity to have a look over it and also
to see the sights around town.
The port of Labuan Bajo was a hive of activity with dozens
of Phinisi boats, fishing boats, noisy bunker boats, ferries and tankers either
anchored, moored or speeding in every direction.
After anchoring Sirocco quite some distance away in a
secluded area, we motored over to find Untung on his
nice new Phinisi “Herlina”.
As there were so many Phinisi’s,
we had to call him up and get him to drop a pin on Google maps so we could
track him down. Eventually we found it and what a beautiful vessel she is.
After a tour of Helina, we chatted until the sun set and
then we all headed into town for some fresh seafood on the foreshore. The
selection of fish, crayfish, mud crabs, prawns, shell fish, squid and octopus
all laid out was very colourful.
We selected some squid, chicken and nasi goreng washed down
with mango juice and plenty of bintang. It was a nice evening and around eight
o’clock we headed back to Sirocco in the pitch dark. Lucky, I had dropped a pin
on Google maps earlier on to make the task of finding her straight forward.
Track Sirocco’s
progress
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