This morning when we got up, we were greeted by a monkey sitting on the mud in front of the mangroves near Kosmos.
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
Continued from yesterday”¦ There were four Komodo dragons lounging under one of the cabins. One of them was huge at least 9 feet long. They are the exact same color as the dirt, so despite being huge, they are actually kind of hard to see. Kind of like the whales in the ocean when we swam with them. The bodies look similar to a crocodile and the head looks like a lizard.
They have scaly skin that looks like Continue reading
Continued from yesterday”¦ There were a handful of tourists up there, and we were all disappointed that we missed out on the sunrise. A few left right away. We had been told that as the sun rises higher in the sky the colors continue to change from what they were at sunrise and that we should hang out for the morning instead of leaving at dawn like most of the tourists. We waited, along with a couple more stragglers, for the sun to break through. Instead, Continue reading
The alarm went off at 0200. Since we have just come off a passage, our sleep schedule is all messed up anyway, so getting up at that hour was no big deal. Had we taken the tour after our bodies had adjusted to an 8 hour a night sleep schedule again, it probably would have been much tougher to get up.
We were being picked up for our tour at 0300 to go to the summit of volcano Kelimutu to see the famous colored lakes in the craters around the top of the volcano. Each lake is a different color, and the lakes each change color over time. Currently the lakes are turquoise, dark green and chocolate brown. A few years ago they were blue, maroon and black, and a few years before that they were blue, red-brown, and light brown. One of the lakes has warm water, one cold, and the information provided didn’t mention the temperature of the third. Kelimutu is sacred to the locals, and they believe the souls of the dead go to the lakes.
When we walked onto the back deck to get into the dinghy, we saw Continue reading
Continued from yesterday”¦ It was time to go. We braved the scary mountain road, bumping and bouncing along. Not too far after the road became relatively nice pavement, we turned off down another road to go to the Niki Niki market. The area we were in is mostly rural villages, and once a week they all came together to trade their goods. It is also a big social outing, where young people look for perspective dating partners. In the village of Boti, they have a day of rest every ninth day. Today happened to be their day of rest, so they had to miss out on the excitement of market day this week.
As we approached, we saw Continue reading