We wanted to escape the southern Aussie winter and, after lots of planning, have settled on Indonesia, East Timor and Papua New Guinea.
Before I begin though, I have to tell you about Courtney. She headed off at the same time as us to South America, She plans to travel for 6 to 8 months there and, if all is going well, head to India for a wedding after that. She has arrived safely so that's a good start.
Connor has come to Indonesia with us. He will stay for two weeks then fly home.
Our flights over were long but uneventful (which is always a good thing!) Our first couple of weeks is going to be spent on the Indonesian island of Flores. The views flying over the volcanic islands were great.
We picked a nicer than average place to stay for the first few days as it was a very busy leadup to the departure for all of us and we all needed a bit of R&R.
We were picked up from the airport and taken by wooden boat to the island. The sunset and the gorgeous islands we saw en-route made for a wonderful boat trip.
We spent our days snorkelling right in front of the resort. The variety of fish was amazing. Over the three days we were there we saw so many amazing creatures, corals and mysterious things that I don't know if they're flora or fauna.
I think you could name any tropical fish and we probabaly saw it. There are so many varieties!
A few baby sharks lived around the jetty. Babies or not, they still look sinister!
Most amazing though were the lionfish. By day they hung out under the jetty. At about 4pm each day they would mosey on out over the coral. They were spectacular! They're also poisonous so we had to keep looking ahead of us in the afternoons to make sure we didn't swim into them. We snorkelled in many other places in the area over the next few days and never saw them anywhere else.
I was really intrigued by these wierd polyp things - I think they're called sea squirts. They look like hearts to me.
I've also never seen these feathery plants before but they were everywhere. I loved the viariety of colours. It really was like a garden under the sea.
One day, I saw one of these move! Apparently it was a feather star. Looks just like the plant to me but I guess it's an animal.
A lot of coral was damaged from previous dynamite fishing but since they've stopped it, it is apparently recovering well. There were terrible bare patches but other areas where it was beautiful.
When the tide was low you could see the coral easily from above the water.
We found lots of Nemos!
That purple casing around the anemome above was weirdly cool!
More strange sea creatures.
There were plenty of starfish.
It was cool checking out the life under the jetty.
A couple of times I got caught up in a whirling school of tiny fish. It was such fun to have them swirling around me, changing direction as one.
On our last snorkel on the island, we saw a turtle! It wasn't too fussed about us. It hung around for a minute or two before slowly swimming off.
Our island from the boat on our way out. It was a great place to stay - fabulous rooms, friendly staff, wonderful snorkelling - and below average food. No matter what we ordered, it was served lukewarm - except for my poached eggs one morning which were served refrigerator cold! There were some really unusual combinations too - anyone up for banana fritters topped with melted cheese and chocolate sauce?
We left our resort and headed to the Labuanbajo, the main port town. Away from the water, the heat hit us. We stayed in a place up on a hill and it was a hot slog home unless we woossed out and caught a taxi.
We organised for a boat to take us around to a few places over two days. Captain Ruslan was nice but not very informative. His boat, like most of the boats here, was a wooden classic.
We went to a number of islands, some of which were very close to the island we had just spent three days on! A couple of the islands were tiny and we could snorkel all around them which was very cool.
Connor got into the snorkelling.
There was plenty of coral and fish here.
At one place, John and Connor finished up and I kept snorkelling for a bit longer. I saw this big ray. We still haven't worked out yet what sort of ray it is, but mantas are a big deal around here and this looks very like like one, although it's small. I'll do some more research and see if I can work out what it is. Maybe there's such a thing as a bent-tail ray - lol! Unfortunately, it was in murky water so it's not a good photo.
On our second day on the boat we left the harbour at 6am, just in time to see the sun rise.
Our first destination was Rinca Island, famous for its komodo dragons. We had no problem finding them - they were everywhere! You have to walk with a guide and ours did a great job to get this photo.
This dragon walked right at us. They can kill a person. They have high levels of bacteria in their saliva so they kill things by biting them then waiting for them to die of infection. Last year a Singaporean tourist wandered off on the island by himself and got bitten. Despite medical treatment, he still died. They are surprisingly fast runners too. They can run about as fast as a human for a short distance. I love the way they poke their tongues out to smell.
Just in case we hadn't seen enough, we found these two mating! At least he seemed to be trying hard and she kept trying to escape.
It must have been the start of mating season. In our guide's words, this male is trying to 'negotiate' with the female! They stood frozen like this for a while and it looked like he was whispering sweet nothings in her ear!
This is typical of the island views. The land is dry, the sea is turquoise and the mountainous islands are rugged and steep.
We also saw monkeys, deer, megapode birds and this cute little red-clawed crab.
At another island we had one last snorkel but it was the only crowded place we came across. Boats were coming in where the best coral was so we left. The water was quite clear though.
I promise you we aren't snorkelling again for quite a while so you'll have a break from my gazillions of photos!
Bye for now.
Heather, John and Connor.
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