The Hatch House Goes Global: Komodo National Park with Flores Journey

I must admit that Komodo National Park is not a place I have long dreamed about going to. But last year, our friends went there and they just raved about it. Their pictures were gorgeous and we just fell in love with the idea of going. Fast forward to now and we have just gotten back from our own trip to Komodo National Park. Our friends were not wrong. It was amazing! I'd say maybe it was almost to our benefit that it isn't a place that we have known about forever, because that way most of what we saw was a huge happy surprise.

I'm trying something new, so if you're interested in zooming and panning around on the map, try clicking on the link to open an Interactive Map in a new window. The map is an attempt to show everywhere we traveled while on the liveaboard.

I should start by saying that getting to the island of Flores, where we began our liveaboard journey, is not a quick thing. From the time we left our apartment in South Korea to the time we arrived at our hotel in the town of Labuan Bajo, 21 hours had passed. You have to really want to go there.

Our hotel, Bayview Gardens, was perched high on the hill overlooking the Flores Boat Pier. We climbed 75 stairs, built right into the hillside, from the front desk up to our family suite. Sunset was spectacular.

The hotel has an infinity pool next to the open dining area where we enjoyed quite a few meals.

The next morning our liveaboard adventure began! We booked it through Flores Journey, a locally owned and operated tour company. I would highly recommend this company to anyone interested in visiting this area of the world. Read on to see why!
Hans was our guide for the 3 day - 2 night journey. He picked us up from the hotel, got us fitted for snorkel gear, and off we went to the pier! We took a small dinghy from the pier to our boat.

That's our boat!

Our boat was named Dunia Baru, which is Indonesian for New World. Once on board, the kids made themselves right at home. The boat was just for our family! We had a crew of 4 men: the cook, the captain, the dinghy driver, and an extra helper for anything that needed doing; plus our guide Hans. We felt very spoiled the entire time.

Our first stop was Kelor Island. We scrambled up the vertical slope to see the view from the top.

Getting down the hill was harder than getting up. Charlie fared the worst, with a slip and a slide he scratched his left leg a little.

Back on the boat, we went to a little spot called Manjarite Beach. We snorkeled there, off the dock. We saw a ton of starfish and one blue sea star. We saw Christmas tree worms, a purple clam, a moorish idol, damselfish, and clownfish living in anemones too.

After snorkeling, we had lunch on the boat!

hanging out in their bedroom on the boat

We then moved on to Rinca Island and our first sighting of real Komodo Dragons!

Our ranger had a big walking stick with a forked end, to keep the dragons at a distance if they got too curious. This, of course, never happened because they mostly just laid perfectly still, like an alligator would.
Komodo dragons are carnivorous lizards, the top predator on their islands. They eat Timor deer, wild boar and water buffalo. Interestingly enough, they are also cannibalistic and will eat their babies and each other.

Their prey: Timor deer

Here is a video of a juvenile we saw. They smell with their forked tongue, like a snake.

More prey: water buffalo

Not sure if this is lucky, but our guide pointed out a green viper snake in the trees above us! I circled it for your convenience.

We walked past a mother komodo guarding her nest and then climbed up into the savanna area of the island.

You can see our boat waiting for us down there.

On the way back down, we saw another dragon and then we walked back to where the biggest one was lying under the porch. He actually moved! More like readjusted his position, but still.

our beautiful boat waiting for us!

Rinca Island has many mangroves growing around its coastline. The tide was low, so we saw their cool root structures above the waterline.

Back on the boat, we had a snack of dragonfruit smoothies and fried banana with chocolate sauce and shredded cheese. Delicious!

We then moved on to Kalong Island to watch the sunset and wait for the flying fox bats to make their nightly appearance.

My camera couldn't always maintain focus on the bats, but you get the idea of how large they are. Also, I muted the sound on this video, since the wind is about all you could hear anyways.

Hans said that around a thousand bats would fly over our heads. It definitely lasted around 20 minutes with the sky filled with bats all flying off for their nightly search for food. They are fruit bats and we estimated their wingspan to be at least 2 feet, but internet searches say it could have been 1 meter.

We stayed out on the top deck of the boat to watch the stars come out after the bats finished their nightly flight. It was a beautiful night and the temperatures were just perfect. Unfortunately, since we were in the southern hemisphere, none of the star constellations were familiar to us. We just didn't know what we were looking at. Still beautiful though.

The next morning we woke up at 5am to try to catch the sunrise from the top of Three Points on Padar Island. Maya was less than enthusiastic about getting up so early and even less thrilled to climb the 800 steps to see the sunrise from the top. She stopped climbing at some point, which is why the pictures are all sans Maya.

This area is famous because the three bays you can see each have a different color sand. The far left bay has pink sand, the near left bay has black sand, and the right bay has white sand. All are on the same island.

There is a lot of squinting in these pictures because of the super bright sun shining in our eyes.

finally caught back up with Maya on the way back down

a look back up the stairs we had just come down

Then we moved onto Long Beach on the other side of Padar Island. It has pink sand! We had the entire beach all to ourselves. I felt like Flores Journey really went out of their way to take us somewhere so special. It was one of those pinch-me kind of moments where you really can't believe you're so lucky to be having this experience.

The kids made abstract art with the seashells. We weren't allowed to take any shells or sand, since it is a national park, so they would just gather them and make artistic piles.

Eric and I walked down the beach a fairly far distance and we discovered bird tracks, crab tracks, deer tracks, and some kind of track of an animal that leaves a continuous track, like something crawling on its belly. It led straight into the scrubby brush. We were told not to go into the scrubby area because there are snakes. Maybe it was a snake track?