After maybe not that much persuading, me, Kiki, Matt from England, (who I'd met in Vietnam) and Mika from Finland, set off the next day, on one of those ridiculous propeller planes, to Labuan Bajo, in West Flores.
Once we'd touched down in what could have been the world's smallest airport, we found a tour to see the Komodo dragons- a two day trip, one day to Rinca Island and the next to Komodo.
The boat had an upstairs area that had mattresses, so we could chill out there until we arrived on Rinca Island.
Rinca is the nearer island (2 hours away) and is meant to be better for seeing Komodo dragons. We chose to do the medium trek around the island and saw Komodo dragons a few meters into our trek. They were taking shelter under the kitchen hut, as apparently they could smell the food.
The guide told us about how they would try climb up into the building at night. There was a gate to stop them getting in.
We walked around the island, and managed to see one eating! Even though they are able to run up to 18mph, they would wait until their pray went past and then they would attack it with their teeth! The bacteria in their saliva would cause blood poisoning. They would eat animals much bigger than them such as buffalo!
Once the trek was finished, the boat took us to the pink beach for snorkling. I use the term pink very loosely- the beach is meant to have amazing pink sand but the sand is mainly white with bits of red/ pink sand where the sea meets the sand.
The snorkling was incredible, some of the best I've done. The water was so clear that you could see fish swimming from the boat with no googles on! We saw loads of fish and there were big schools of fish swimming past us.
We spent the night in Komodo village- a very basic town, where the houses were on stilts- and we arrived early the next day at Komodo island.
Komodo is very similar to Rinca. It is the larger island and the dragons were dotted around the island, rather than in one place like Rinca. The scenery reminded us of Jurassic Park, and from the top of the hill the view was quite impressive. We saw more wildlife than on Rinca- there were monkeys, buffalo and several wild birds.
On the way back, we stopped to snorkle at Manta Point. There were some huge manta rays but it was hard to see them for long as the current was so strong.
There was a final snorkling point by an island. We just swam to the island and had to come back before the rain came.
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