Rinca Island

If Komodo Island had not already put its name into the name for a certain monitor lizard, then Rinca should have. They had more, and more active, Komodo dragons than Komodo.

It’s a longer boat ride from Flores, but not by too much. We arrived to find the docks surrounded by boats. Apparently in Indonesia they don’t have anything like a polite or reserved system of using docks. No authorities check the right to moorings. When we arrived, we had to squeeze in as close as we could, then step from boat to boat until we reached the walkway.

From the shore it’s about a ten minute walk to the visitor’s center where you collect your mandatory local guide or two – long with their forked sticks. I’ll get back to that in a minute.

You walk through a long, flat area that looks like it would be very boggy in the rainy season.
As soon as we’d cleared that area, we saw our first Komodo dragon. It was a three year old, so far from full size but bigger than the ones we first spotted on Komodo.

Cant see it? It’s right in the middle of the picture with it’s tail toward us. Or, here’s a better picture:

Rinca has monkeys, too. This time we weren’t warned to keep our water bottles hidden or hide our glasses. These monkeys can’t afford to be too adventurous since the dragons tend to call them “snack”. They mostly stay up in the trees.

There were probably just as much in the way of birds and seeds for us to look at on Rinca. We stopped to look at some horns and to discuss male verses female palm trees. I’d had no idea trees had gender.

So, about the long sticks. It seems the president of Indonesia showed up on Komodo Island with a retinue of soldiers. He was told in no uncertain terms that although the soldiers were welcome to walk around the island with him, they were not allowed to carry any firearms or ammunition. Even the president had to rely on the guys with the long sticks. When he begged to differ, they pointed out their international status and the potential for sanctions. He didn’t stay long.

We had no sooner picked up our guide and gone around the corner of the welcome center when we ran into our first adults.

They are a bit smaller than the ones on Komodo. Since the ones on Komodo hardly twitched, and these seemed perfectly happy where they were, I thought we had already caught the highlight of the visit.

I needn’t have worried. In about ten minutes walk we came to some nesting grounds.

There happened to be a female there in the process of laying eggs as we arrived. Lucky us!

Komodo dragons generally lay between fifteen and eighty eggs. They need that many since they are cannibals. They only mate one time a year, but it takes two and a half hours at a whack. They live about fifty years.

All we could see at first was her head. She came out of the hole after a few minutes and seemed to be making a beeline for a woman on the path in the group after ours. The path curves around the nesting area.

She wasn’t exactly running, but when a 180 pound 9 foot lizard comes right at you, it’s… thrilling?

She stopped only a few yards from the other group. Apparently the dragon just wanted to give another hole a shot. This is common. They don’t like to put all their eggs in one basket, but don’t necessarily put a lot of distance between one clutch and the next. In the rainy season the nests will be under water.

She was completely unconcerned about the people watching. Instead, she concentrated on scraping dirt out of the ground until we got bored and moved on.

Did I mention that trees have gender? I have no idea which this is, though we were carefully taught. By then my smartpen was doing stupid things, leaving me with nothing but my little note pad. I missed a lot of details.

This is about where my notes mention that the nearest hospital is a long way off. However, they were breaking ground on the building of a new hospital in Flores. They expect it to be a real life saver. By now it is probably even accepting patients.

From here we started on a fairly strenuous hike. The path took us on a long loop through the woods. Again, just like on Komodo, the curving route took us up a substantial hill where the trees cleared away. It wasn’t a much of a hill, but similar grass complete with water buffalo.

Then, as we headed back toward the information center, we faced a long, straight path heading down hill. A full size male dragon stepped into the path and headed straight our way.

I think if there had been fewer of us, we might have been in danger. I was one of the first to the top of the hill, so I was one of the few to watch it enter the path and make it’s way toward us.

But as we pointed and chattered, more and more of us came up behind me. At about ten of us, the dragon veered off the path and headed into the woods.

We ran down the path and chased after it! When we reached the place in the path where the dragon veered off, the site guide went bush-whacking with us right behind.
Poor lizard didn’t know what to make of us. He beat a hasty and determined retreat, but I manage to get a good shot anyway.