Komodo Dive Trip

We flew Denpasar, Bali to Labuan Bajo, Flores, arriving around 1:30 pm.  We, along with 5 people from Hong Kong were picked up by the dive company.  A short ride to the pier and we boarded our boat, the Blue Dragon.  We were given a juice, shown to our rooms and told we would be doing our check out dive at 3:30 pm.  Visibility wasn’t the best but the fish made up for it – amazing fish and so many of them!  Some very different than the Caribbean.  Interesting boat – it feels like we are on a pirate ship!  The Blue Dragon has a 12 crew with only a few speaking English both dive masters speak English.  The crew consists of 2 engineers who keep the boat running, 2 hostess/cabin people to keep us happy, 2 small dive boat operators to get us to and from the dive sites safely, 2 dive masters that are extremely good at what they do; our safety is their priority, a chef who provides the best Indonesian food we have tasted so far, his assistant, the captain who navigates us through some of the weirdest currents, safely and I have forgotten the position of someone else, sorry.  If you caught my key word describing the crew it is ‘safety’. The owner of the boat, Gan, a man in his mid 30’s from Malaysia had brought the group from Hong Kong.  He is an extremely energetic and knowledgeable person – a fun type of guy; great sense of humour!

  

Andrea, Brook & Greg waiting for our gear in Labuan Bajo airport

Komodo National Park

Greg & I did not sleep the first night.  Our room is sea level next to the generator which runs all night. Morning call was 6:20 am – Greg and I were already awake!!  This is the first day of 4 dives per day.  A pre breakfast snack of toast & jam & peanut butter, Nescafe, tea or Milo (fortified hot chocolate) is available.  Daily schedule is up, eat, dive, eat breakfast, rest, dive, eat lunch, long rest know as nap, dive, snack (deep fried bananas, today – yum), night dive, eat dinner, then rest or sleep or whatever.  Food is so good – real Indonesian food; not too spicy.  Greg adds hot sauce.  Brook breaks out in a sweat! 

B & A – rest time and B really is doing some of that!

Our room is very tiny but quaint.  It is in the basement at sea level.  It has a bed, bathroom with shower. Through the porthole window in the bathroom we can view the beautiful blue water sloshing up and down.  Very cool.

Diving has been amazing.  Have I used that word before?!?  We take a small boat out to the dive site, never more than a 10 or 15 minute ride. The driver waits for us and picks us up where we surface.  Brook, Andrea, Greg and I are diving out of one boat with the same dive master, Usty. The HK group, another boat.  It’s been very much fun, exciting too. Three dives today.  The second dive was a drift of 8 knots – extremely wild and crazy.  At one point in the dive, as pre planned, Usty gave the signal; we held hands with our buddy.  Usty entered between the pinnacles and we followed, very quickly or we would be left without a dive master!  We shot up from the floor at 48 feet, up through the pinnacles to 28 feet then back down the other side to 35 feet. It took only a few minutes – wild ride!!  Some of the fishes and only a few as there is more colour here than one can imagine: giant sweetlips, coral grouper, pink anemonefish, big nose unicorn, 6 banded angelfish, emperor angelfish, black spotted puffer, Indian lionfish, clown trigger fish, hawksbill turtle.  Lots of beautiful corals too.  The colours have lots of light blues, bright yellows, lots of beautiful blacks – different than the Caribbean for sure.

Komodo National Park is beautiful.  You are surrounded by islands – it’s like a maze.  Certainly happy someone else is navigating us to both the dive spots and though the islands.

Dive Site - Batu Bolong