It's Sailing Time. Meet the Dragon! (Sailing trip and more to come part 3)

Slightly introduction about Komodo and Komodo National Park. The Komodo National Park lies in the Wallacea Region of Indonesia, identified by WWF and Conservation International as a global conservation priority area. The Park is located between the islands of Sumbawa and Flores at the border of the Nusa Tenggara Timur (NTT) and Nusa Tenggara Barat (NTP) provinces.It includes three major islands: Komodo, Rinca and Padar, as well as numerous smaller islands. The Komodo Dragon isthe largest living species of lizard found in the Indonesian islands of Komodo, Rinca, Flores, Gili Motang, and Padar. Their unusually large size has been attributed to island gigantism, since no other carnivorous animals fill the niche on the islands where they live. It has been claimed that they have a venomous bite; its saliva is frequently blood-tinged, because its teeth are almost completely covered by gingival tissue that is naturally lacerated during feeding. It also has a long, yellow, deeply forked tongue which they uses it tongue to detect, taste, and smell stimuli, as with many other reptiles, they also really sensitive with blood, that's why if you're Female and in your period, you wont be able to visit them. Komodo dragon skin is reinforced by armoured scales, which contain tiny bones called osteoderms that function as a sort of natural chain-mail. The Komodo Dragons food mainly consists of deer, though they also eat considerable amounts of carrion, also occasionally attack humans.


Our next destination was Rinca Island. Compared to Komodo Island, Rinca Island currently has the highest population of Komodo Dragon, even higher than the Komodo Island itself eventhough the island was smaller, so we have to be really careful here. It's raining when we arrived at Rinca Island, well, actually the dark cloud already following us since we finished our lunch. So we're waiting the rain to slightly stop before we moved to speedboat to go to the port. Yeah, we always using speedboat to go to each destination.
The entrance of Rinca Island called Loh Buaya, Buaya in Bahasa means Crocodile, but in here it means Komodos. They also called Buaya as they sometimes can be found swimming. So the first rule here was swimming is prohibited. Well, except you want to experience swimming together with Komodo, which I didnt intended to. Hahaha

From here, we will need a short trekking to go to the Ranger places. The Captain keeps reminded us to follow the path and not went separately. Since in this place, the Komodo could suddenly appeared. Also, he reminded us to buy the tickets for 2 days at once. Since tomorrow we would also need to go to Padar Island and Pink Beach, which still inside the National park.

In the front of Administration place

In the administration place, we need to buy entrance tickets for all of the guests, and here comes the problem. So, as you might know that the domestic visitor and foreign visitor. Usually the entrance fee for domestic visitor will be cheaper than the foreign, and it also happened in here. In National Komodo Park, you will need to pay different type of fees.

First, you need to pay for the entrance ticket for Komodo and Rinca Island (it costed IDR 20k per one day/visit). And then you need to pay for the entrance ticket of National Komodo Park (IDR 5k per person/day). After that, you will need to pay for the trekking (IDR 5k) and the observation fee (IDR 10k). Dont forget to add the ranger fee (IDR 20k/person) whom we have to use their services during the visit.

And the problem was with the foreign guests. In our group, we have 3 foreign guest from French. And their fees were quite expensive, since their entrance fees itself cost IDR 150k, so their total fees were more than IDR 200k. Actually the administrator said that it would be cheaper if we bought two days at once (as per captain said), but they're quite concern with their fees, so finally we decided only bought for one day. The problem will came if suddenly the patrol ship caught us, since they count on the boat, not the total guest. So eventough we bought for two days but the foreign guest bought only for one day, all of us need to leave the National Park. Well, they took the risk thou (eventhough I dont want to).

Okay, so back to the visit.. So actually they have 3 types of trekking: short, medium, and long trekking. The longest trekking could be around 3 hours and medium around 1-2 hours. The ranger said that track was actually not that different, and they also said that eventhough we took the longest track, it's not a guarantee that we would met more Komodo.

But due to the weather, finally we got short trekking. With the end point on the top of the hill.

And here goes the briefing time.

Not far from where we started the trekking, there's a kitchen house, where, apparently there're some Komodos laying around. We're so lucky, the Rangers said, since we can easily found the Komodos and the Komodos already have their meals, so their just lazily lying around here and there (reminds me of Sean though. Hahahahaha). But yeah, dont even think to disturb them. lol

Here comes the trekking time~

Along the trekking, we met Female Komodo. Apparently the previous Komodos that we saw earlier were all Males. Since during October, the Female were guarding the nest. So, the mating begins between May and August, and the eggs are laid in September. About 20 eggs are deposited in abandoned megapode nests or in our trekking we found some self-dug nesting hole. They usually dug some holes to deceive the predators from the real nest. The eggs are incubated for seven to eight months, hatching in April, when insects are most plentiful. Young Komodo dragons are vulnerable and therefore dwell in trees, safe from predators and cannibalistic adults. They take 8 to 9 years to mature, and are estimated to live up to 30 years. We have to be really careful here, since you know how the moms will get mad if you're disturbing their children, well, you dont want to disturb them, especially Komodo moms since Komodo could suddenly ran up to 40km/hours.lol

We continued our trekking to the top of hill in Rinca. Well, it's not that high (compared to the one in Nyang Nyang beach, Bali) and the weather was really nice, so we can also enjoyed the view. We stopped slightly below the top to have a rest and took some photos. In here, we could saw the hills that surrounded the island.

We continued the trekking into the top of the hill. The view from above was mesmerizing, we can see our ship from there, including the hills, villages and forest.

The Four Travellers were back:D

The ranger previously said that there's a heart stone above. Which, we finally found what it was. Hahahaha

After finished the photo sessions, we have to going back down to the ranger village. The trekking down was, quite challenging.lol

And we also found some interesting things to be captured along the way back to ship.

The next destination after Rinca was Kalong Island. Kalong means Bats, so in the dawn, we can see hundreds of bats flying in the sky. I always fall in love with sunset, but the sunset here was totally beautiful. We're really lucky, since previously it's raining and cloudy, but we got the sunset and also saw the birds flying in the sunset before the bats.

The ship was docked not too far from Kalong island. And there where we spent our first night on the ship. It's quite a clear night and the stars're really pretty. Too bad I couldn't captured it.
The next day we'd have another trekking to Padar Island, they said that the view there was more amazing. And trust me, it more than amazing!
Well,see you (hopefully) soon.

Ja ne.