The Wandering Hart

One of the things I really wanted to do on this trip was see real live dragons…. Komodo dragons! Komodo National Park is off the coast of Flores Island in Indonesia and is a beautiful set of islands. And for some of those islands – there be dragons!

We did a three day (really more like two and a half) liveaboard on a small ship to see all the sights around the islands at a slower pace. There are also options to do most of it in day tours if sleeping on a boat isn’t your thing, though! Our boat through Travass Life was pretty great. The rooms were small but clean and there were only 4 other couples (so 10 guests total) on the cruise with us.

One of the unfortunate things about the boat was most of the shared space was uncovered for sunbathing. In case it wasn’t clear from my pictures, the sun and I aren’t friends…and yet I chose to socialize and lay on deck as we shipped out! Naturally I was lobster red within hours of departure in spite of my sunscreen. Whoops!

Sunburn aside, we had a great time on the boat. They took us through a ton of activities including multiple snorkeling excursions. On the first day we did two snorkeling sessions seeing both sea turtles and manta rays. It was really magical seeing them so close and in their natural habitat. I skipped the other snorkeling excursions because I was already too sun exposed but my husband told me they saw some beautiful coral as well as a ton of fish and blue starfish on those. If you’re into snorkeling or diving you definitely can’t go wrong with Komodo!

On the first day we also stopped at a small sandbar for photos and at Padar Island to enjoy sunset from its peak. The Padar Island sunset walk most tours do involves a lot of stairs and it turned out the very top was full of partying twenty-somethings. Since that’s not our scene, we found a nice spot a little shy of the actual top and enjoyed a beautiful sunset from there.

The second day included the main event: Komodo Island. We were immediately greeted by a park ranger who guided us on trails around the park. Note: do NOT go off trail or around without a ranger if you go to Komodo! Tourists have literally been eaten as recently as last year by the dragons. Our ranger guide was really great. Initially we saw a small baby dragon and that seemed like that was all we would see. Then we were lucky enough to spot an adolescent near the watering hole and I was pretty happy with that. But our guide then went off and found a fully grown komodo dragon and lured it with food to where we could see it – right on the trail ahead of us! The rangers were also great at letting us get our photos while keeping us and the dragon a safe distance apart. Honestly it was just so cool to see one up close and totally made the trip worth it!

Other stops on day two included photo ops at the famous pink beach on Padar, more photos strawberry rocks (which were these cool pink patterned rocks due to their high iron content) and viewing flying foxes depart Kalong Island to hunt for the night. Watching the flying foxes at sunset was amazing. The sunset was gorgeous and it was just incredible to see hundreds of bats the size of geese stream off this island and over our boat!

The final day included watching sunrise from a small island called Kelor Island and the last snorkeling excursion. Then it was back to land and time to say goodbye to our new friends from the boat. This was definitely a worthwhile trip and I’d highly recommend Travass Life if you want to go see the dragons! The food was good, the rooms were nice, and I saw everything I wanted to see. Just don’t get sunburned on your first day and you can have a perfect Komodo trip!