Fast Scoots and Slow Routes

We escaped the big city of Jakarta to an island in the Flores Sea. Once again DawnO did a masterful job at picking our “Hilltop” accommodations as our home base.

After getting our bearings we started booking our various excursions including the boat trip to Komodo National Park. First, we had a day to kill so we decided to find our way to a small village where we could book a private boat to one of the smallest islands in Indonesia, and a very cool spot called the Rangko Cave. That’s when we met a hot little firecracker named “Scoopy”.

With DawnO navigating from the back seat, we began our scooter trek. We took the way that our navigation app told us to take which meant we had to plough our way through some muddy sections. All-in-all Scoopy proved up to the challenge and got us to the Rangko village.

We hired a pair of brothers to take us to our destinations. When we reached the smallest Island in Indonesia, it was only visible when the waves weren’t crashing over it. This was the only picture we took:

At this point our boat had bottomed out at the “island”. As our team of brothers worked our boat free, we nearly capsized. However, I escaped without getting too wet, DawnO was on the wet side of the boat. As we floated away, our guides told us the island is way more spacious during low tide.

Next stop was the Rangko Cave. The cave has a pool you can swim in but the light only enters for about 1.5 hours in the day.

After we returned to Scoopy we elected to take a 100% paved route back to our hotel.

Next on the excursion list was an all day excursion to 3 islands including Komodo National Park. The fourth destination was the possibility, not the promise, that we could snorkel with Manta Rays. When we booked we had the option to pay a little more and book a fast boat, which included 2 more stops, but we decided on the slow boat option because we knew there would be less people on board. I could be wrong, but I estimate that for our 13 hours total time, 9.5 of those hours were spent on board the slow boat.

9.5

Hours

First stop, Padar Island, where you can climb 900+ stairs to get a view of 3 different coloured sand beaches: white, grey, and pink.

Our second stop was the main event! It was time to see some Komodo Dragons!

It was cool to see the dragons. The smaller ones moved around while the bigger ones mostly parked in the shade. The park itself was a little underwhelming but it could have been that the massive cruise boat that supplied thousands of people to the island may have scared off a lot of critters. Our nature walk around the park didn’t provide anything but exercise which was needed after logging 5 hours on the slow boat.

Next stop, pink beach time! We didn’t take a lot of pictures here so I’ve added a bunch of photos we took from our boat:

The last stop on our excursion was Manta Point. Now this was the point where the boat crew keep their eyes peeled for Manta Rays and when they see one, a boatload of frantic snorkel-sucking passengers jump into the sea to catch a glimpse and say they got to swim with manta rays. I would be lying if I said it’s not on our bucket list to swim with a manta ray in the wild. I also must remind our readers that my ability to spot animals in the wild is quite abysmal. Here are 2 versions of our story.

DawnO, who chose to wear a life jacket, was one of only 2 boat passengers to spot the 3 manta rays from the boat. She is also debatably the only one in the water to “swim with them”. Once the rays had swam out of view she effortlessly made her way back to the boat to go again. The boat motored up current to look for more majestic sea creatures. She told the others that watching them swim was like watching large blankets gliding along the sea floor.

Manta rays-Check!

When I heard the battle cry to jump in the sea, I believed I tripped over the side and immediately discovered that I could only see through one eye as the other was fogged up so bad I had to pause a moment to spit in it and clean it out. That’s when the current took hold. I didn’t quite notice as I was now trying to look for manta rays. After about 30 seconds of that I looked up and noticed the boat was not down current, as promised by a crew member, but was up current loading the rest of the passengers. I was getting pretty tired and remembered that I flunked out of the Maroon level in swimming so I should probably stop fooling myself and start kicking my diabetic ass to the back of the boat, which up until now was one of the slowest moving motorized water vehicles on the planet. I kicked and kicked and kicked but every time I checked my progress, I seemed further away than when I started. Panic set in and now I pulled my snorkel out of my mouth to try and yell for help. Unfortunately I was breathing so hard I managed to pull in a breath of salt water. After coughing that out I put in one final effort and swam as close as I could to the boat. That’s when they threw me a rope.

Manta rays-Maybe next time.

Stay tuned for one more blog before we leave Indonesia. Next up, a river boat adventure in Borneo with orangutans!