Rinca Island

We missed Tony Blair and family by a day. When we went to the Ranger station on Rinca island in the Komodo area we were told that they had been there the day before for an almost un-announced visit. Saw their names in the book above ours! Enjoyed our visit, hope they did. The rangers in this world heritage site are young school leavers who speak good English, ours was trying to save up to go to university in Bali. Armed with a long, stout forked stick he took us on a walk around and told us all about the Komodo dragons which live on a few islands here and nowhere else.

They are large monitor lizards, several meters long, and have some pretty nasty habits. Their saliva is toxic, so they can kill animals much large than they are by biting them and then waiting a few days until the animal dies. Evidently the BBC were here last year making a programme about venoms and it is due to be shown/has been shown this year. Animals like buffalo are bitten from the back while drinking at a water hole - their horns and hard skull are good protection otherwise. Smaller animals like monkeys and deer are eaten straight away, the dragons' mouth opens very wide like a snake's. They have long sharp claws and can run short distances and swim a bit. Not an animal to antagonise! There are 3 males to each female, so they fight to get the woman, a good way to ensure survival of the fittest. The female digs a hole in the soil to lay and bury her eggs, and the babies climb up trees after they hatch and stay there eating insects and gekkoes for a couple of years. The safest place to be as the males are likely to eat them if peckish - and adult dragons can't climb trees.

We did another walk with our lad Eric the next day, starting in the cool of the morning at 7am when there were fewer other visitors. No need for the big stick, all the dragons we saw were pretty sleepy and completely ignored us!

We have spent the last couple of days anchored off beaches on the same island. In the morning and late afternoons dragons come down to the beach to have a snooze and to walk along the sand. They have a very acute sense of smell using nostrils and forked tongue, and one huge brute could definitely smell my frying onions, he even walked to the edge of the water and his snake-like tongue was 'feeling the air'. He decided not to swim over to investigate thank goodness. A troop of monkeys, a family of wild boar, and a couple of large brown deer were also taking their daily exercise.

This all makes a nice change from villages and people, friendly and interesting though they may be. Hardly anyone lives on these dry mountainous islands, and they are surrounded by rip tides rushing between them, not easy in a paddled canoe. The sea is crystal clear and snorkelling really good. Where we are at the moment we can swim to the reef from the boat. The corals are beautiful and there are clouds of small fish everywhere. Note the 'small', there just aren't any big fish. We caught a small tuna the other day, the first edible fish we have caught.