Westysclan World Cruise 2023

We dropped anchor at about 6am and they had the tenders out very quickly for our transportation to the island.

The organisation of groups on to the tenders went quite smoothly. Because you can only go ashore as part of an organised tour (Indonesian government rule) we had booked our tour tickets very early and opted for an early time slot – 9am – 11am before it got too hot. We were still in group 17 though. Groups were of 20 people and about 4 groups could fit in each tender.

It was only about a 5 minute trip in the tender to the jetty where you had to step out of the tender and climb up a set of crumbley concrete steps with no hand rail! We had all been forewarned of the step situation.

We were then introduced to our guides – one would be at that the front of the group and the other at the back. All guides were equipped with a forked stick to shoo away or control any dragon that got too close to a tourist. Dragon’s are actually quite poisonous. This (and the crumbley step situation) put a lot of people off the idea of visiting, but Mark and I were very keen to go and reasoned that they (Princess) would not bring people here without doing a risk assessment first. When we went to Africa the family joke was that Mark and the kids didn’t have to outrun the lions because they could outrun me! Dragon’s can also run quite fast (20km/h) so I was feeling quite confident that I could outrun a lot of my fellow passengers. That was until I learned that Dragons are quite lazy and prefer to hunt by stealth e.g. lay in wait by a track and use their size and those nasty claws to injure and knock over their prey before going for a lethal bite to the neck. Their bite is toxic because it contains an anticoagulant that causes their victim to bled out in a number of hours. Even if you escape the bite, their claws contain bacteria that will cause you to die more slowly. Good news is that, even though they eat 80% of their body weight per meal, they only eat once per month. New tour strategy for me – position myself amongst some other equally chunky tourists – ‘cos if I was a Dragon, I wouldn’t be bothering with those skinny, boney ones!

Our next dragon sighting was of a young dragon. They are about 30cm when they hatch and they make their way quickly up to the top of dead palm trees where they live for most of the first 5 years of their life so that they are not eaten by the bigger dragons – including their own mother.

At the waterhole we were rewarded by seeing 3 large male dragons. Even though it is hard to distinguish males from females, June/July is mating season, so the ladies take themselves off to hide in the bush. The guides had marked a circle around the waterhole so that we could safely watch and photo/video the dragons. A few guides kept watch in the opposite direction because there were a few more active juvenile dragons venturing in.

Past the waterhole we were taken to a nest. Being lazy, dragons wait until birds make these nests and then take them over. It takes 9 months for the eggs to hatch. The mothers only sit on the nest for the first 3 months, but they dig decoy holes in the nest to help protect their eggs from predators. They lay between 15 – 30 eggs, of which only 20% survive to hatch.

After the tour you, of course, get channelled through the market where the locals try to sell you dragon carvings (quite good craftsmanship actually) and an assortment of other tacky dragon souvenirs- t-shirts, magnets, postcards and jewellery. I understand that it is part of their livelihood but I just find it so uncomfortable.

2 hour tour successfully completed it was time to head back to the ship. Then came a challenge that Princess probably hadn’t predicted! Although there were plenty of tenders, they could only be loaded one at a time. It was now low tide, which meant that the whole of the crumbley, no handle rail set of steps had to be descended. This was a huge challenge for a lot of the passengers who had to be helped down one at a time. The up shot of this was that the cue and wait time got longer and longer and those waiting got hotter and hotter! The local kids probably thought it was great, because while the adults sell their wares in the under cover market, the young boys are sent out to work the crowds waiting on the jetty. Princess had set up marquees at various points along the jetty and also handed out cold water, umbrellas and iced wash clothes. Even though I thought it was not too hot or humid by what would be standard Northern Queensland weather at this time of the year, it was too much for some of the passengers who started to faint. We had 3 gents faint around us – managed to catch one and ease him on to a nearby fender before medical help arrived.

After 1 and 1/2 hours queuing, we were glad to be back on the ship to have a cool down swim and then bubbles on our balcony as we sailed away from the dramatic landscape of Komodo Island. Sadly my photos could not do the scenery justice.

A little bit tired from our long time standing in the sun, we decided to cancel our restaurant dinner reservation and have very tasty burgers from The Grill on the pool deck as we enjoyed this sunset.