Travel Blog: The Dragons of Komodo Island

January 28

And finally, the day many people were waiting for....now we just had to make sure the ship could safely anchor and tender us in to shore. It happens frequently that the winds in this area make it impossible to get guests to shore, and the stop at Komodo has to be cancelled. Fortunately, and maybe because we'd had so much lousy weather so far, Mother Nature decided we deserved a break.

Arriving at Komodo Island

Even the rocky islets look like some kind of a
serpent

Not only was it not windy, but any rain in the forecast was for later in the day. And on top of that, I had booked us on the first departure to the island, at 10:00 a.m.

There is a town of about 2,000 inhabitants
on the island. Many work for the National Park

Our welcome party - some deer had come to
the beach to cool off. It was quite humid!

Komodo and the other islands where the Dragons are found is Loh Liang National Park. Indonesia gave them this status to help with preservation efforts of the Dragons. It is also one of the Modern 7 Wonders of Nature.

We met up with our local guide and his helpers, all staff of the National Park. It is not permitted for anyone to tour the island without these park rangers, for obvious reasons. The dragons are very strong and quick, and they are carnivores.

Before we started out, our guide gave us some information on the Komodo Dragons. They are actually a type of Monitor Lizard, with a maximum length of about 10 feet and weight of about 330 lb. They live only on four islands in this very small area and because they are not found anywhere else on earth, they are considered an endangered species. They eat invertebrates, birds and mammals, and this includes those cute deer that met us at the pier. It is not unknown for them to eat hatchlings and young lizards, either. The first European sighting of a Komodo Dragon was only in 1910, and after an expedition to the island in 1923 and the return of some live specimens to the US, the Komodo Dragon became the inspiration for the movie 'King Kong'.

The female takes over an abandoned Guinea Fowl nest and digs additional holes in the mound to hide her actual nest from predators. She lays between 15 and 20 eggs and then leaves the nest, lurking about 10 metres away to keep an eye on it. The gestation period for Dragons is about 9 months. Once the eggs hatch, the first thing hatchlings do is to find a tree and climb it for safety. The one with the horizontal stripes is a favourite type of palm as it provides food and shelter for the growing lizard.

When the lizards are between 4 and 5 YEARS old (imagine living in a tree for that long!) and can defend themselves, they come down from the tree and live as juveniles for another 4 years or so, then as adults to an approximate age of 30 years. Males are known to fight over females and apparently they make one heck of a racket when they do.

Our group of 25 was told to stay together as much as possible, and one of our ranger helpers always brought up the rear of the group. One of our members was a lady who used a walker, and according to her husband who was near us on the trail, the main reason for coming on the cruise was to see the dragons. She did extremely well, although her walker would have needed a thorough cleaning when we were done. This is the rainy season all over Indonesia, and the path we followed is just gravel and sand. In many places we had to skirt large puddles. She would have had to go right through the middle of them as her walker would not have fit the one shoe wide alternate route.

Our walk along the medium length path would take about an hour and a half, depending on the number of stops we would make for dragon sightings. The first one or two were in the dense undergrowth so I had trouble finding them. You see if you can identify a large lizard-like creature in this photo:

Not long afterward in a large clearing we spotted our first Komodo Dragon:

He was fighting with a hunk something that our guide said had probably been a deer.

Here's a short video of this guy.

Larry in the foreground with the Dragon behind him. The rangers were taking photos of people with the Dragons in front, but there was a little more activity before we could get that done, and we had to leave.

This large fellow came out of the bush and took over the path. Fortunately we weren't going in that direction. He certainly looks every one of those 330 lbs and 10 feet!

When he decided to move, it sure didn't look like a couple of rangers with sticks would be able to slow him down or change his trajectory. I certainly would not want to have him chasing me! And on that note, we were all warned not to wear red, and if someone had open wounds or even if a woman was menstruating they should consider staying on the ship. These guys have a very sensitive sense of smell.

This last one to join the club was about 4 years old and would only recently have come down from the trees. I can't imagine anything that big that didn't have wings living in a tree!

This was the only sighting we made during our walk, but it was enough. We had to navigate those puddles I spoke of earlier, and it would have been difficult for us en masse to get away from a Dragon that decided to follow us. Of course, the joke around the ship was 'You just have to run faster than one other person....'

This is a Komodo Dragon nest. The mound
is quite large and she's dug 3 additional holes

We were back at the tender and on the ship around noon, and groups had been going out every half hour. We were scheduled to leave the island at about 5 p.m., so the last groups would be doing their walk around 3. But right around that time a huge rainstorm hit. It would have made the walk almost impossibly muddy. We didn't talk to anyone who was in the later groups, but they may have cancelled the final tours out as we hauled up the anchor and started to leave at about 4:30.