Rinca Island: Komodo Dragons at Loh Buaya

“Jurassic Park”, or an expedition to Rinca

Yesterday we flew to Flores and had time for a walk around Labuan Bajo. The village is so pretty and cosy that I gave it a chapter of its own, “Labuan Bajo: Where the Road to the Dragons Begins”.

Early this morning, after breakfast, we set off for the port. The sun had not yet climbed high, and a morning haze hung over the water. The day promised to be windless and hot. There was a serene calm in the air, for all the bustle of the boatmen getting ready to put to sea.

Boats at anchor in Labuan Bajo’s harbour in the soft morning haze, with green hills behind. — The port at Labuan Bajo.

The piers were packed with moored boats of every size and design. We quickly found ours, where the crew who were waiting for us, a captain, a cook and a boatswain, were getting ready to cast off.

Two women stand on a concrete pier beside a row of blue-and-white wooden boats, a crewman stepping aboard. — On the pier beside our boat, a quarter of an hour before we sailed.

A barefoot crewman coils a rope at the bow of a white wooden boat, with the harbour and hillside town behind. — Getting ready to sail.

How to get to Rinca

The first question most people face when they set off for the Komodo islands is which boat to choose. A great many companies offer every possible option, from small launches that take two to four passengers, not counting the crew, to roomy double-decked ferries.

I can’t say how many people travel in the big groups, because that option did not interest me at all, but during the trip I saw about 20 tourists come ashore on an island from one of those ferries.

A traditional wooden ship and smaller boats drifting in calm blue water, a round green island behind. — Boats drifting in the harbour at Labuan Bajo.

This photograph happens to have caught several kinds of vessel in one frame; every one of them was bound for the national park that day.

A white ship with a riveted, porthole-studded bow tied up beside a white two-masted sailing ship with a blue hull. — And merry little ships like these call at the harbour too.

We did not hesitate for a moment and chose a small boat with two cabins, one for us and one for the crew, and a little deck.

A crewman in a white T-shirt stands on the bow of a blue-and-white wooden boat with an orange awning, moored at the pier.

It looks rather basic, but it has everything you need for several days afloat: a cabin with a bunk bed, a deck with a table and two broad benches along the sides, a galley where the cook reigns, a toilet, and even a free stretch of bow where you can sunbathe, should the thought ever cross your mind.

A quarter of an hour later, the last preparations done, we set out for the Komodo dragons. Ahead of us lay a two-day voyage around Komodo and Rinca.

Little by little the lovely harbour of Labuan Bajo slipped away and soon vanished over the horizon. We found ourselves surrounded by a hundred islands peering up out of the water.

A small passenger boat crosses calm water in front of a line of dry, rugged hills.

The dry climate gives itself away in the scorched vegetation of the islands, with only a few bushes of a dusty, muddy green.

A round, sunburnt hill with a few trees and a thin white beach, rising from a deep blue sea.

But that takes nothing from the colour of the landscape. The scenery here is glorious, and you cannot take your eyes off it.

Green and brown hills behind a pale strip of beach, under white clouds, across calm blue water.

Brown and green hills folding down to a palm-fringed beach and a few small buildings, across still blue water.

A wide panorama of golden, sunburnt hills over a turquoise lagoon.

After a while the islands disappeared, and an extraordinary blue closed around us. Hundreds of shades of blue passed into one another. The pale sky, bleached by the high sun, flowed smoothly into the dark blue line of the sea on the horizon, which grew richer and deeper in colour as it came closer.

Open sea in layers of blue under a pale sky, a low island on the far horizon. — Shades of blue.

Two and a half hours later the shore of Rinca appeared on the horizon. The captain announced it, but my eyes were fixed on a band of sea of the most unbelievable turquoise. Had I not seen it myself, I would never have believed such colours exist in nature.

A band of turquoise shallows in front of deep blue sea, with low green islands beyond.

Bright turquoise water over sand in front of dry hills and a mangrove shore.

The Komodo dragons of Rinca

Rinca is the island closest to Labuan Bajo. It is smaller than Komodo, the main island, yet when I went it had more dragons: about 2,300, against 2,100 on Komodo.

For all their formidable neighbours, about 3,500 people lived on the park’s islands then, around 1,000 of them on Rinca.

We sailed into a pretty bay, headed for a small jetty crowded with moored boats, and stepped ashore.

Wooden boats moored at a jetty in a calm green bay, dry hills behind and a man bending over a canoe in the foreground.

This place is called Loh Buaya: loh means bay, and buaya means crocodile, a name owed to the crocodiles found here.

It is the only landing on Rinca where boats tie up for visitors, and anyone who wants to walk on the island is signed in and given a ranger as escort.

A thatched pavilion with a crossed roof ridge at the landing, a sign reading Loh Buaya and information boards inside.

Loh Buaya is where every walk on Rinca begins. It sits in a quiet bay with a wooden pier, surrounded by hills whose vegetation has been burnt by the sun, and a few trees. A little way inland from the shore, a gate rises in your path: the entrance to Komodo National Park.

The gate of Komodo National Park on bare ground, its two stone pillars flanked by carved dragons climbing them.

A little further on I saw the simple facilities: thatched buildings where you can even arrange to spend the night, a kitchen, a café, and a “tourist office” for the briefing.

A water buffalo skull with long curved horns, an orchid growing from it, fixed to a tree in front of a green wooden hut. — A telling ornament, hinting at how seriously to take the place.

We were given a briefing on how to behave on the island. Do not go closer than 5 metres to a Komodo dragon: they have a keen sense of smell, and the scent of blood draws them from a mile away. Do not feed the dragons (I wonder, has that ever occurred to anyone?). And make no sudden movements.

And here I smiled, seeing yet again an enormous ledger in which every visitor’s name and country is written down.

A ranger’s most important attribute is a stick forked at the end. As he explained to us later, the dragons are very afraid of it.

The ranger showed us the map of the area and invited us to choose a route.

A young ranger in a green uniform holds a forked wooden stick beside a board titled Loh Buaya Walking Trails. — Our ranger in full battle readiness, with the map for the conquest of the dragons’ island.

There were five routes, differing in length: the shortest took 45 minutes, and the longest meant more than four hours of tramping.

We asked our ranger where, in his opinion, the dragons liked to spend their time. He only smiled and shrugged. Evidently he did not want the responsibility of advising us.

We chose the green route. We decided we would walk it quickly and then, if need be, set off along another.

We had taken only a few steps when a dragon, strolling lazily along, cut across our path.

A young Komodo dragon walks across a dusty path lined with stones, a ranger with a stick watching from behind. — This Komodo dragon is only three years old. Just a baby.

A slender young Komodo dragon crossing a stone-edged path in dappled shade, its tail curved behind it.

I looked around. The scene was somewhat epic. Under the wooden buildings, or simply in the shade of the trees, great hulking bodies lay almost on top of one another, now and then opening an eye. The kitchen attracts the lazier dragons, and they have become permanent residents here.

A large Komodo dragon lying between rocks at the foot of a tree, almost the colour of the ground. — I walked straight past it at first. Had I not looked twice, I would never have noticed.

Several Komodo dragons resting together on bare ground in the shade beneath a raised wooden building. — One big happy family, for the time being.

A Komodo dragon stretched out flat in the shade under a hut, eyes half-closed. — Asleep, or just deep in thought?

A Komodo dragon resting under a hut with its head raised, a second dragon walking behind it. — No, not asleep.

But this is not the interesting part. True, you can look at the Komodo dragons here from very close quarters, but for real emotion we set off further, into their natural habitat.

We climbed a hill with an astonishing view over the bay of Loh Buaya and the country around it. The weather was hot, and the sun beat down without mercy. But the colour of the water made us forget every discomfort along the way.

From a hilltop, a deep blue bay winds between sunburnt hills, with yachts at anchor and islands on the horizon. — The bay off Loh Buaya.

Rolling green and tawny hills on Rinca under a blue sky with white clouds. — The landscapes of Rinca.

We crossed a little more open ground and then plunged into the forest. From there, a narrow path covered with fallen yellow leaves led us on towards adventure.

A narrow path edged with stones runs through dry woodland carpeted with fallen leaves.

The Komodo dragon’s home is tropical forest with tall grasses and shrubs, but it is also found in the lowlands, on beaches and along the mountain ridges.

Besides the dragons, Rinca has plenty of other wild animals, all closely connected to the dragons, being their immediate source of calories.

Komodo dragons sit at the top of the food chain, since there are no other large predators on these islands, no tigers, no lions, nothing of the kind. They are predators, scavengers and man-eaters.

A water buffalo with wide curved horns stands in long grass at the edge of the trees, looking at the camera.

Dry woodland with leaf litter and dappled light, no animal obvious among the trunks. — And here, can you see anyone?

The Komodo dragons mate between May and August, and this is when the males fight seriously for supremacy. In September the females lay their eggs in hollows they have prepared in the ground, hiding them from their own kin and from anyone else who fancies a delicacy.

The young hatch seven or eight months later. Young dragons spend most of their time in the trees, where they are safer from predators and from their own elders.

And we had arrived at exactly this interesting time. We missed the dragons’ battles, but the nesting grounds, which the rangers fence off to be on the safe side, look like this:

Dry forest floor scattered with leaves, with several hollows dug into a mound of earth. — A few hollows in the ground, easy to spot with the naked eye: Komodo dragon nests.

A small warning sign on a post in front of a nesting mound in dry woodland. — And a warning sign insists that you keep out of the nesting area. I wasn’t especially keen to go in.

A bare, twisted dead tree among green trees against a bright blue sky. — The landscapes of Rinca are as spellbinding as ever.

Walking on Rinca: a debrief

As far as I could establish, collecting information and statistics along the way, the route you choose makes little difference to the number of Komodo dragons you see. Most of them gather at the very start of every trail, around the kitchen, where they are fed. Further on, it is all down to luck. So choose by how much you want to walk and how long you can manage, and by how much you want to see of the island’s scenery: with its climbs and its distance, the long route has the most colourful views.

Olga stands by a lone, windswept tree on a dry hilltop path under a blue sky with clouds.

A Komodo dragon lies in dry grass on a hillside above a sandy plain, mangroves and a winding blue bay beyond.

The ranger himself has a far greater effect on how strong the emotions are. In this respect, we were unlucky. Barely 100 metres from the camp, I realised that he was evidently terrified of the dragons himself. He gave them the widest possible berth, merely pointing out that, waaay over there in the bushes, there had been a dragon, which naturally we could no longer see. We pointed out one dragon to him ourselves: he had simply walked straight past an enormous beast barely 3 metres from the path. My dismay knew no bounds.

In the end, our tally on Rinca was two Komodo dragons in their natural habitat, not counting the dozen by the kitchen (those don’t count).

We decided to try our luck on a second island and set off for the largest in the national park, Komodo itself.

Three hours later I was standing on high ground on Komodo, looking out over a fairy-tale view of the sea.

From a wooded hillside, a long jetty runs out into a calm blue bay ringed by dry mountains. — Loh Liang, Komodo Island.

The story continues on Komodo Island.