We had planned a special day for Komodo Island because Radena wanted to see the Komodo dragons and it’s one of the main attractions in Indonesia and for a good reason. These endangered lizards are really amazing to see!
We took a boat around the islands and ended up combining a few islands, first day we went to Komodo Island and they took us around the forest to find the dragons. We had taken a bit of an offroad path because the lizards were not in the mating season so they were spread around the whole island, so we had to walk around and look for them. Our tour guide told us someone else had seen them on top of a hill and we had to climb over bushes and mud to get there, a bit of a fun experience in the not-so-cool way 🙂 Especially since not all of the tourists were really prepared, either physically or in terms of the shoe type they were wearing. Before going up that hill we saw a tiny baby Komodo dragon, which was probably the size of a cat or so, but considering how huge the dragons were as adults, this was indeed a tiny baby and it had escaped, we couldn’t really see it. But when we went on top of that hill there were many people surrounding one of the giant lizards. The animal was laying down and sunbathing looking like it couldn’t care less about the tens of people around it. The tour guide forbade us to go ahead of him, we must always be behind them, so they can look around and see in time and react to a dragon if some sort of danger arises. They could take a photo of us with the dragon, but we must be 2m behind it, however on the photo it looks like you’re very close. It was forbidden to pose as if you’re touching/petting the animals, because it looks as if you’re actually petting it and that encourages tourists to get close and try to touch the animals. And you don’t wanna mess with Komodo dragons. Their saliva kills because it contains something like 52 bacteria types which is a cocktail of bacteria that poisons your blood and shuts down your organs. And Komodo dragons run fairly slowly but can run for a very long time, so while their prey runs faster, it would eventually stop to rest and the dragon would manage to reach it. They eat mostly deer which lives around them on the island. They also eat buffalo, wild pigs and monkeys, all living on the island of Komodo. The dragons look super calm and sleepy however they hunt exactly like that – they wait till the deer walks within their reach and just bite it and let it die.
They showed us also a komodo dragon’s nest – the female digs a hole in the ground, up to 2.5m deep and would lay 21 eggs on average. She lays them usually in August and defend the nest until December. She does not have enough time and resources to eat too much during that time period and loses a big amount of her weight – around 20 kg for these few months. Once the babies hatch, they’d immediately climb the trees. Many of them don’t survive falling prey to prey birds and even other komodo dragons. The babies might cover themselves in feces in order to avoid being detected. Until they reach about 20kg in weight they’d stay up on the tree and will go down they they are big enough to survive on the ground.
We went to Rinca island too, which is also a home to Komodo dragons. Rinca is the ialsnd in orange between Komodo Island and the west side of Flores island on the map at the top. It was actually less crowded and so much better, we saw more dragons there than on Komodo itself, nice forest and really nice paths to walk on. Except it was really hot, but we made the walk, no problem. It was really awesome, because there was a point where we had to cross a little bridge but we couldn’t because.. a dragon was lying in the middle of it, so we had to cross over the little river which wasn’t an issue per se, but they have also some not-so-harmless snakes so we were a bit worried but our tour guide was going ahead of us kind of “scaring” them away with a stick 😀
