Today I got to see a Komodo Dragon in the wild. It’s been on my list of things to see for quite a while. I thought I’d see one laying around not moving but instead I got to see one walk by me on the trail and another two that were starting to wrestle with each other, plus another four or five that were eating and resting. Komodo dragons will eat anything- even other komodo dragons. The baby/young komodo dragons climb into trees for protection against the larger ones. They stay there almost two years. They are not toxic until they start to eat meat.
We took a tender to the pier where we met our guides- one was the leader who spoke English and explained about the Komodo dragons, the other two each had a stick with two prongs at the end of it- they were to prevent the Komodo Dragons from getting too close to us. You are not allowed to walk in the park without a guide. You can’t even get off the pier without a guide.
We walked into the forest on a path about three feet wide. As we were leaving the staging area, a komodo dragon walked by and onto the path we were going to take. Then shortly after we started walking on the path, we heard a shout and discovered a komodo dragon was walking on the path behind us and it was catching up. The guides kept saying “move off the path”, “move off the path”- everyone was so excited to see and photograph the komodo dragon they weren’t listening very well. We did all get off the trail in time for the komodo dragon to walk past us- it wanted to get closer to us but the guides with the sticks poked at it enough that it stayed away.
Then we saw a number of komodo dragons eating and resting. The guide offered to take my photo in front of the dragons. He said “sit over there” but there was no way I was sitting on the ground so I crouched down where he pointed. Then all of a sudden, I heard shuffling behind me and another guide was saying “move away”, “move away”. I jumped up and moved away! Then turned around to see that two komodo dragons were wrestling behind me.
Jennifer didn’t want to get close to them but was very excited that she saw one from the ship with her binoculars.
After the komodo dragon visit, we got on a small boat and were taken to a pink sand beach so we could play in the water and snorkel. It was wonderful and I enjoyed it very much other than the small fright I had when I realized I was moving in an ocean current away from the beach. Luckily the current wasn’t very strong, I noticed quickly and was able to get back to calm waters. Later in the day the guides had to rescue two different people from the same current because they didn’t notice and got too far out.
