Day 1- We woke up at 6.30 and took the first boat to Lombok where our trip started. We did alot of waiting around here for everyone to meet up, had to then drive to another port where our boat was leaving from and more waiting around there. We finally got on the boat, had lunch and left at 4pm. We stopped off at an island where we walked up a hill for sunset. We had a couple of drinks back on the boat and went to sleep on our mats, accompanied by 30 other people. It was pretty cosy and an awful night sleep as the waves were so choppy!
Day 2 – We stopped off at an island where we walked to a waterfall and climbed up it, had a swim and climbed back down. We had some snorkelling time at the beach and then got back on the boat and sunbathed on deck. The rest of the day we were travelling and by tea time, the waves were so choppy that hardly anyone ate the food, not many people were drinking and most people (including Kerry) headed to bed with sea sickness tablets.
Day 3 – Our first stop was Manta Point where we all jumped off the boat and snorkelled with Manta Rays. This is something we have both wanted to see for a while and were so happy that we actually saw loads of them! They are so different to anything we have seen! Oh and whilst we were at Manta Point we also saw some small sharks!!! (No photo of the sharks as they were swimming too deep so didn’t catch them on the camera). After here, we went to Komodo Island which is the other reason we did this boat trip. Komodo Dragons are the largest living lizard in the world and they typically weigh around 70 kilograms. They eat deer, but have also been known to attack humans, so we kept our distance and stayed behind the guide who had a big stick to fight them off if they got too close (which luckily didn’t happen). We only saw two dragons at Komodo Island and they were both near the cafe of the park as they apparently smell the food – but are not fed by the rangers. None of them moved and were both just lay down in the shade. In the afternoon, we went to Pink Beach which was really cool and a nice place to chill out with a beer and do some swimming and snorkelling. The reason the beach is pink is due to microscopic animals called Foraminifera, which produce a red pigment on the coral reefs and when combined with the white sands, this produces the colour that is visible along the shoreline. Afterwards, we went back to the boat for our food and had drinks on the deck with everyone.
Day 4- Our first stop was Padar Island and we were all woken up at 4.30am to trek to the top point of the island for sunrise. It was tiring, but definitely worth it!! The view of the 3 beaches was amazing. Afterwards we had breakfast back on the boat, had a little nap and then sunbathed on deck. Our next stop was Rinca Island which is another island where the Komodo Dragons live. This was amazing… We did a short walk around the island and saw more than 10 dragons here. We enjoyed this more than Komodo Island as they were walking around here and we were coming accross them in their natural habitat and not just by the cafe. Afterwards, we did our final stop at Kelor Island which was a really nice beach where we had some time to sunbathe. We also did some snorkelling here which was good! From here it took us around 2 hours to reach Labuan Bajo which was our final destination and when we arrived here we showered (we didn’t have one for 4 days) and went out for burger and chips as we were so sick of eating veg for 4 days.
Kerry and Jonho's Travels 