Lombok
Lombok featured sketchy safety rules, scammers, and children taught to beg and stick their hands practically in your pockets for cash........
When we set foot onto lombok that's when the adventure really began. I hadn't made any definite plans here because nothing struck me as overly interesting for a day long activity. I did hear about a great beach so I figured that was a safe bet for the day. As soon as we got off the ship the taxi stand was ready to help get a driver. The price was a very unfortunate $80 per car USD. For a country with an exchange rate of 9,000 to 1 USD, this is astoundingly high.
We ended up finding another couple with the same plans as us and shared a ride to the beach, we discovered they were part of our cruise critic group also so it turns out we "knew" each other. This made sharing the ride far less sketchy and off we went.
What happened after was basically this: after the driver spent 1.5 hours trying to kill us we arrived at an alley with a dumpster at the end, we walked through the alley to a 15 foot wide strip of sand that sloped down into dirty water. Walking further we found a sheraton hotel which was actually great. We ended up exchanging use of their beach chairs for purchasing lunch on the resort. Then, all of the cruise ship excursions dropped 100's of people off on this tiny beach, they overtook the Sheraton, Sheraton flipped out, cruise ship people wouldn't leave, so we packed up and got lunch which was unbelievably good at an outdoor bar/restaurant on the property.
View from Sheraton's beach:
After our lovely (?), relaxing(?), day on the beach we head back to the ship where the driver tries telling us two things first that the cost is $80 per couple, and second that the cost together onto the dirty beach was $40 a couple. Then the children swarmed us digging in pockets and asking for money. We paid $80 to the driver left him stomping his feet in the parking lot and split.
Komodo island
When I first saw Komodo on the itinerary for this cruise I was all "yay the dragons, we can see them, so cool" half way through our trip I was trying desperately to remember who else has our life insurance information.
When we pulled up to komodo (do you pull up to island on a ship?) first impressions were how pretty and lush the island is. Since there are only a few hundred inhabitants here (because who in the hell wants to share their island with 2,065 carnivorous lizards?!) the island is very undeveloped. We get off the tender boat, meet our guides and off we go. ......
Now being from the safety regulated USA I assumed that viewing the dragons in their natural habitat meant one of 2 things 1) they enclose the humans on some sort of viewing platform or 2) the dragons are acclimated to humans because they are around all the time and the dragons don't see us as dinner. I also wrongly assumed it had to be relatively safe if they were dropping 2,300 passengers off during the cruise. Additionally, I felt relatively comfortable with my back up plan for being on an island with carniverous lizards, and that was, of course, that I only needed to outrun 1 other cruise ship passenger.
Our guide grabbed a stick that was about 6 feet long with a forked end and we took off behind him. Thinking back on this moment I probably should have asked a few questions about this stick, but I digress. We finally come up to a clearing with 4 lovely sunbathing lizards hanging out, reiterating my safe feeling of acclimated dragons. Afer getting some pictures of them, we followed our guide ino the woods for some lecture on the dragons and the island. As you can see below we got pretty close to these guys.
As we are listening to our guide a group of cruise ship people came running up behind us yelling "the dragons are coming, the dragons are coming!!" our guide continued to lecture us on the native trees to the island or something until he noticed this angry guy coming up through the woods right at us
He wisely told us to turn around and get moving. quickly.
After continuing on our tour and meandering through the island a little, we encountered the most absurd thing I have ever witnessed, of course I shouldn't have been overly surprised. We were lined up in a group of about 40 people along the trail, and across the clearing another 30 or so people were grouped together. There were 5 guides kind of hanging out in between us. Almost silently a large, angry dragon started creeping out of the woods, completely unnoticed by pretty much anyone until it was about 50 feet away from a person. This naturally prompted the person to freak out and start screaming. This immediately sparked a response from the guides, one of which was to run like hell in the opposite direction. The remaining guides started poking at the mean angry big dragon with their little sticks (so THATS what the stick are for!!), when the guides figured this method wasn't really working so well, one of them came over to our group lined up on the trail and told us to run for the bridge. Now, I do not need to be told more than once to run away so off I go toward this little 1 1/2 foot wide bridge. Myself and another like minded girl from our group reached the bridge first. When we got there, we ran into 2 women blocking the entrance to the bridge, wide eyed with cameras out. We told them to move so, you know, we don't all get eaten. There response to us "but we're taking pictures!!!!". SERIOUSLY. Ladies, there is a very large very angry very meat eating lizard less than 50 feet away from you, MOVE. We basically pushed them away, got on the bridge, and made the immediate decision to leave the island.
Even though this was a pretty dangerous little excursion I'm glad we went, we had an adventure, lived to tell it, and have no desire to ever go back.
In the space of a few hours we saw a dragon sprint (I'm not even kidding they are very fast), were told to either turn around an move quickly or to run away from dragons, watched a deer get attacked, and almost became dragon dinner. So it is without much regret that I say goodbye ugly, drooly, angry carniverous lizards.
Goodbye.
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