Komodo, Indonesia

[Jules77]

In need of some sunshine, tropical sunshine and clear water my dive buddy Charlotte and I headed off to Indonesia a couple of weeks ago.

The travel went smoothly on the way out via Hong Kong on Cathay Pacific to Denpasar in Bali. Note to self- apparently they wave people through with lots of luggage at Heathrow but will try and charge lots of excess baggage on the way home even if you have dumped all toiletries and books etc.

We stayed a couple of nights in Bali in a hotel with a very grand entrance but everything else was in dire need of a coat of paint and bit of freshening up.

We then headed out to the Komodo Dancer for a 7 night cruise around the Komodo National Park. The first day was spent sailing out to Satonda Island and we had a minimum of 3 dives everyday – the most was 5 dives. Without describing every single dive in its entirety it was mostly reef dives with really good visibility and a wide range of the usual suspects in terms of reef fish etc. Having spent a year and a half working on the Great Barrier Reef in 2000 and 2001 there were most of the same species but the coral was in very good condition. A couple of dives which really stood out for me were Big Nose – a beautiful sheer wall covered in corals with a swift drift and Castle Rock which was absolutely full of life with sharks, turtles, cuttlefish and just hundreds of the smaller fish life. My favourite dive was at Hot Rocks which has warm sand due to the vents from an active volcano under the water there. The visibility was stunning there and huge amounts of corals on the rocks. There were long nosed hawk fish, pygmy seahorses, octopus, pufferfish as well as the big pelagics and plenty of nudibranches (which I love) and the weird one which I never did discover the name of but it looks a bit like a Chinese dragon.

We also did a land excursion to see the Komodo Dragons which are quite frankly, some of the ugliest lizards I have ever laid eyes on.

Other stuff

The accommodation on the boat was really nice. It took 15 guests and there is plenty of room for people to sit without being on top of each other. A large central table on the front deck meant that people ate lunch and dinner together which was a good opportunity to catch up on those big fish stories from the day. The crew were brilliant, handing out towels and offering back massages on your return to the boat, all the dives were off tenders but the crew took gear to and from them so life couldn’t have been easier. Gary, Else and Wayan the dive guides were fab and Wayan in particular was a star when it came to spotting the little critters down there.

I don’t think that Komodo is as dramatic as Sulawesi and that part of S E Asia and it is quite a long way to go for nice tropical diving without being blown away on every dive. However it doesn’t seem to have prevented the holiday blues from setting in….

I will put up some of my photos just as soon as I can work out how to resize them so they are not mega-files that the forum won't accept.

[hogen-deifar]

Welcome back Jules!

Sounds like you enjoyed it! Can't wait to see the pics.

Now get back into those property files!!!!

[Jules77]

A few more photos...

[Jules77]

And the last lot - sorry could only work out how to put on 5 at a time.