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August 2001
Komodo and its Dragons
Odv2004-09-15 12:29:19
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Rating: 2.00 out of 5.00. 2 members have rated this article
go on one of those organized boat tours.
From the PHPA camp you are supposed to be able to walk to the village in approximately 30 minutes, at least according to the Lonely Planet guide. Unfortunately the path soon disappears, and you're left guessing which way you should go. It took us more than an hour.
In the village dozens of children greeted us and followed us as we walked around. Later we chartered a boat from one of the villagers to take us back to the camp.
There's one destroyed building in the village, the locals told me, it used to be the police station "from the Labuanbajo police" as they said. The villagers didn't like them and routed them. As a result there's not a single policeman on the entire Island. Not a big loss since Indonesian cops unfortunately tend to be more occupied with filling their own pockets than with law enforcement.
Of course the PHPA staff take care of the national park and the protection of the dragons. They seem to be on good terms with the villagers.
From the beach the view of the bay, and surrounding mountains is awesome. In the distance, one can see Padar, and Rinca behind that. I stitched together several pictures I took to make a panorama. Click here to see the panorama from the beach.
Most people go to 5 star resorts to get to beaches that look like this on brochures, however once they get there so are countless other (noisy) guests. A beach all to yourself that would be paradise.
Komodo beach, is that paradise!
Let me qualify that:
You have the beach, the warm sea and trees for shade all to yourself. There are some more differences with your average 5 star resort, there are no luxuries on Komodo so don't expect somebody to be serving you drinks. But that's not all.
The real problem, on Komodo is that you've got to keep your eyes open for dragons ALL THE TIME!
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See photographs from:
Indonesia Gallery
