Komodo Island

February 25, 2025

On our today’s stop we are visiting Komodo Island, Indonesia. Home of the Komodo Dragon, one of the largest lizards found on Earth. Komodo Island is part of the Coral Triangle, which contains some of the richest biodiversity on Earth. The population of the island is approximately 2000. The estimate is that there are approximately 1000 dragons on the island. There are smaller quantities of dragons on two neighbouring islands. In 1991 Komodo Island became an Unesco World Heritage Site.

Today , we had to use the tender boats to get to shore. The seas were very calm today, which was nice, especially with the limited infrastructure at the island docking site. In order to visit the Island, you had to be assigned to a tour or excursion. After we arrived at the island we were rounded up by our tour guide and shortly after that we were on our way walking along a path through the dense bush. We were accompanied by Three guides with sticks to keep the dragons away in case we encountered them. After walking for half an hour we came to a clearing in the bush. Here we saw a group of 5 dragons hanging out. After taking pics, we followed the path back towards the dock area. Beside the dock we spotted one more dragon hanging out near the beach. My guess is that he was working on his sun tan. After wrestling our way through the maze of vendors set up near the boat we got back onto the tender boat.

This was a very special place to visit, especially now that there is talk to shut down the tourism to the island in order to conserve the dragons and build up their population.

Cheers

Cor and Carol