With their bloodlust, Sumo-style wrestling methods, capability for virgin delivery and status for grave-robbing they could appear to be creatures straight out of the Jurassic, however the island houses of those mighty lizards aren’t any theme park.
Bali is the final place on Earth I anticipated to search out myself. It was – to my thoughts – too industrial, too overhyped and it had starred in that Julia Roberts tearjerker, Eat Pray Love.
However I used to be stirred by an atavistic boyhood dream: a want to see Komodo dragons on their residence turf.
A part of their attract is that they’re so seemingly far-off, and attending to Indonesia’s Lesser Sunda islands is neither simple nor low cost. Bali was a seductive base whereas I investigated cheap dragon-chasing adventures – finally, I booked a five-day seafaring journey between Lombok and the easterly islands of Komodo, Flores and Rinca.
It was not, by any stretch, a luxurious liner, however somewhat a barefoot boat journey with all of the clichés of tough life at sea, plus a self-styled Indonesian “cruise director” who briefly identified the lifejackets and ran by an itinerary that seemed like a full season of The Superb Race crammed into just a few days.
A salt-licked breeze skipped by the bobbing vessel and at instances once we hit wild waters, we bounced and careened. However we landlubbers shortly discovered our sea legs. Whereas privileged, high-price-tag passengers slept in dank cabins beneath deck, the majority of us, with our backpacks, slept up prime on skinny mats that had been rolled out after dinner.
Except for meals that appeared thrice a day from the minuscule galley, there have been no video games or diversions, no bingo nights or cabarets on board, and no distractions by any means, in actual fact, from the turquoise waters lapping on the shores of immaculate little island coves the place we stopped to swim, snorkel and sunbathe. On fairly Satonda, we splashed about in a thermally heated lake in an extinct volcanic caldera, and at Sumbawa’s abandoned Donggo Seashore, we lazed till the arrival of a killer sundown.
Our boat regarded like a toy in comparison with the big cruise ships that drifted into the waters round Komodo Island. These huge vessels spewed out lots of of vacationers who had been ferried in speedboats to satisfy the island’s rangers.
Quickly sufficient, we too made land and had been being led throughout the scraggly, sun-scorched panorama, up steep hillsides, and thru a ragged forest the place we lastly made eye contact with the fearsome beasts we’d come to see.
Illustration by Jess Nicholson
At three metres lengthy, Varanus komodoensis isn’t any odd lizard. With its lengthy slithering tongue and beady eyes, when it seems at you, its 100-million-year-old reptilian mind is calculating methods to have you ever for dinner. Our rangers, who carried nothing however massive sticks to fend them off, defined how they take out deer, gang as much as kill water buffalo and eagerly eat their very own variety. Youthful dragons will roll round in faeces to make themselves much less appetising.
Pity the witless vacationer who will get left behind or pauses within the improper spot for a selfie. Though cumbersome, they’re sneaky, stealthy hunters, their modus operandi is to ambush after which sink their claws and razor-sharp shark-like tooth into their prey, releasing a toxin that lowers blood strain, causes profuse bleeding, prevents clotting and finally sends their sufferer into shock.
Even for those who handle to wrench free and get away, they’ll catch up finally and gorge on you even for those who’re already useless from the toxins. They’re such unfussy carnivores, in actual fact, that islanders must pack contemporary graves with rocks to stop dragons from digging up the useless.
Whereas the vacationers appeared like simple targets, official figures recommend that comparatively few people have been killed by dragons – or ora, “land crocodiles”, as they’re identified regionally – since Western science turned conscious of them in 1912.
In contrast, regardless of their protected standing, as a result of their habitat has been destroyed for agriculture, Komodo dragons are severely threatened, and the variety of mature lizards within the wild might be beneath 1 400.
The plight of disappearing dragons is what many years in the past prompted the institution of Komodo Nationwide Park, encompassing 29 volcanic islands and one of many richest marine environments left on Earth, a part of an underwater wilderness referred to as the Coral Triangle that teems with fish and populations of dugongs, sharks, manta rays, whales, dolphins and turtles.
As soon as our allotted time monitoring lizards was up, we sailed to certainly one of Komodo Island’s presumably dragon-free coves the place we snorkelled with prettily patterned creatures – pygmy seahorses, frogfish, ornate ghost pipefish, nudibranchs, and blue-ringed octopuses. After floating about for hours, we climbed to a excessive bluff and gazed out at a community of rugged islands, fringed by cobalt blue, scattered throughout the ocean.
We spent the night time in its harbour of Labuan Bajo, a steamy, dusty city on the island of Flores and set off earlier than dawn in time to catch the dawn over Rinca island, the place we went ashore to see extra dragons and watched a pair of feisty males engaged in a bloody scrap over a chunk of meat.
It was a compelling scene, however later – as we sailed from Rinca again in the direction of Lombok – the temper aboard our boat was solemn.
Every of us had chased around the globe to witness these primordial creatures romping round their pure habitat, however seeing them undergo the desire of stick-wielding rangers, guarded and monitored as a lot for their very own safety as for the protection of dim-witted people, appeared to one way or the other render them broken-spirited, lowered to freakish sideshow circus displays. Not fairly a tearjerker, maybe, however tragic nonetheless.
If Komodos do change into yet one more ghost species, it wouldn’t be the primary time. Consultants reckon the dragons first settled in Indonesia about 900 000 years in the past, presumably swimming from their place of birth. Till 50 000 years in the past, they occupied Australia. Then people arrived, they usually disappeared.
This text initially appeared within the August 2022 print concern of Getaway
By Keith Bain
Illustration by Jess Nicholson
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