Komodo Island
Where do I start?? Pulling into Komodo National Park is like something out of a movie. It is stunning, it is picturesque, it is every beautiful adjective you can think of and none of them do it justice. I could not believe my eyes and I already want to rent a boat for a week and just park it right there.
According to our cruise line, you needed a booked excursion to leave the boat. This is not one of those places where you can get off and explore the island. This is to help with conservation efforts so I can’t fault them. We had the option of either a Komodo Dragon tour OR a local village tour that ended at a pink beach through the cruise ship but in the end we booked through a local tour guide that took us to see the Komodo Dragons and a pink beach. I will be the first to admit that I had little desire to see the Komodo Dragons but it was such a hit with my girls (especially Millie, she can’t stop talking about “I did see the Modo dragons”) that it was totally worth it.
A few pieces of advice on Komodo Island:
The path is dirt and gravel so closed shoes are better than sandals. I kept having to clean out my sandals.
If you have a personal fan, bring it. It was SO HOT. Darwin and Komodo National Park were the hottest stops we had on the trip. We were drenched in sweat almost immediately.
Wear something breezy. These pants are crocheted and I was still hot.
If you have an infant carrier, wear it. You’ll be carrying the little ones when you’re around the dragons. A beefy stroller could handle the trail but I didn’t ask if those were allowed and didn’t see anyone with one.
Komodo Dragons are dangerous, however they rarely attack humans. We kept a safe distance and in our family picture we’re about 10 feet behind him. I joked that this one was an animatronic because he was so still but I did see him move twice. Except for in this picture, we held Millie during the entire tour. The two large male dragons kept eyeballing her (at least it looked that way to our group) and even though we were a safe distance away, and moving away, we just didn’t want to chance it. Our tour guide, Frits, was a joy to have that day and I would absolutely recommend booking with Top Komodo Tours if you make the trip out there. He was knowledgeable, personable and funny and we enjoyed spending the day with him.
We all got the chance to snorkel around and it was teaming with so many fish and different types of coral.
After seeing the dragons we headed out to a pink beach. We had a traditional homemade lunch aboard the boat on our way out and it was so good that my children actually ate it and we talked about it the rest of our cruise.
We tendered over to a small pink beach. It was incredibly crowded and the sand was pink in certain lights but not glaringly so. The pink color comes from microscopic animals called Foraminifera which produce a red pigment on the coral reefs. There is so much coral and shells on these beaches I referred to them as a coral graveyard - and they are not super fun to walk on. My girls had a blast swimming around and finding cool shells. This was such a great day that I didn’t want it to end. Even the sunset as we were leaving was beautiful.
