Banta Island to LBJ July 2015

We left Gili Lawa Laut for Labuhanbaju (LBJ) via Manta Alley, where Morg and I had a snorkel and spotted two big Mantas below us just cruising the bottom feeding. They are very big and very graceful. I think we were pretty lucky to see them as the dive boats said they had been quite elusive recently.  

Morgan and mum snorkelling with the mantas

Carried on to LBJ where Warren was to meet his cousin Graham Smith who lives there. They hadn’t seen each other for 20 odd years so were looking forward to a good catchup. LBJ is a hub for diver charters. Tourists (mainly from Europe) come here to charter local Phinisis (boats) for dives over to Komodo which has a large marine park around it and offers great diving. Clear warm water with a lot to see. Lucky for me Graham was a diver so on Sunday we left Morg and Warren to fend for themselves and went for a couple of dives around Gili Lawa Laut. This was where you got to see the ‘big fish’ so they told us. I saw a black tipped reef shark, giant trevallies, barracuda, blue spotted rays, moray eels…… Nice to have a dive that didn’t involve cleaning the bottom of the boat or untangling crap from the prop.  After a week in LBJ it was time to move on. We managed to get some provisions including chicken (killed, plucked and chopped) beef and pork. You can buy a chicken anywhere but my talents don’t extend to killing the poor beast. Used to the dead frozen variety.

LBJ harbour at sunset

LBJ harbour by day

So we were off to see the dragons back to Komodo (Rinca Island actually) . You need to walk with a guide, and we chose the early morning walk as this was when they were most active.

View from the top of Rinca Island

Glad we didn’t go when they were inactive-as we didn’t see any dragons out in the wild, only a few back around the rangers lodgings. The kitchen feeds them so I think they were the ‘pet’ dragons. Really they looked just like big Monitor lizards.  More fascinating was the sign on the jetty saying don’t swim crocodiles around. There is a resident 4m croc living in the mangroves which I was more terrified of than any dragons. Needless to say no swimming off the boat in that bay. We also met another Australian cruising boat here, a real novelty as haven’t seen many cruisers at all. But no chance for a catch up as we had to be on our way.