Passage from Labuan Bajo to Bali

On Monday, we were still feeling pretty beat up from diving the day before. We went into town for breakfast. We ran into some of our new friends we had met from diving the day before and had breakfast with them, which was nice. We both got banana pancakes. Rather than mashing the banana into the batter, they put sliced bananas in the pan and dump the pancake batter around it so it all cooks up together. They were good.

We decided that we should probably spend the day doing chores, so we headed back to Kosmos. At that point we still hadn’t decided if we were leaving the next day, as we had originally told the harbor master, or if we would stay one more day to do another dive. As we were walking by the Harbor Master’s office, he Continue reading

Diving and Swimming with the Manta Rays in Komodo National Park

Continued from yesterday”¦ We suited up yet again, this time to go snorkeling with the Mantas. We swam around in search of them, and they didn’t take long to find. We saw a few individuals gracefully gliding along the floor below us. We also saw a group of four in a row, swimming in a wavy, loop de loop pattern one of the most elegant games of “follow the leader” we have ever seen. A couple more individuals entered the stage and suddenly we were looking at six mantas below us at once. It was pretty cool.

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Within 15 minutes of climbing in the boat Continue reading

SCUBA Diving in Komodo National Park

The dive boat picked us up at 0730. The boat is really nice by Indonesian standards. Like most Indonesian boats we have seen, it is all wood, but better maintained than most. It is relatively quiet compared to the majority of the boats around here, which seriously sound just like helicopters with their super loud one cylinder engines. We went with a company called Dive Komodo. There were two dive masters, two deck hands, and 9 passengers. There were some sweet rolls out, as well as coffee and tea and a cooler with water and soda.

The ride out to the north side of Komodo Island took 2 ½ hours. We anchored and looked at the site. It was a large rock. You could see Continue reading

Welcome to Labuan Bajo City, Flores Island, Nusa Tenggara Province, Indonesia

We wanted to go snorkeling today. We thought it would be fun to kayak over to a nearby snorkel spot and snorkel off the kayaks, rather than taking the dinghy. So, first thing this morning, we got the kayaks down. We went to shore and asked the ranger to mark the good snorkel spots on the map. They were all really far away even farther than the hour and half dingy ride we had taken to see the bats. It sounded like we really needed to move Kosmos to go snorkeling. Hmmm”¦ if we were moving the boat anyway”¦

We talked about it and decided that the best thing to do would be Continue reading

Seeing Wildlife in Komodo National Park

This morning when we got up, we were greeted by a monkey sitting on the mud in front of the mangroves near Kosmos.

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He was still contentedly sitting there when we went into shore. We met our ranger friend from yesterday at the ranger station at 0700 for a longer trek around Rinca, where we would hopefully see more animals. There were three Komodos under the cabin this morning, including a young one only about three and a half feet long.

We started off Continue reading