Our group made an early morning visit to the park to observe the famous Komodo Dragons up close. As we reached the landing pier around 7:30AM, the island was already teeming with tour groups. The heat and humidity were already cloying and intense.The visitor center is well organized with guides, maps and story boards of facts about the island and its wildlife.We were given excellent reference materials and information pamphlets that helped us get the most out of our brief time ashore.
We encountered a pair of dragons almost immediately on the trail. Sometimes they stay hidden from view, although there are deer, wild boar , cockatoos and flowers and other animals to see. A large pair of males engaged in a singularly amusing tussle as they warmed up in the morning sun. When the dragons awake they are almost comatose from the cooler evening air, but then they warm up and move about. They can run up to 15 MPH! One dragon lay outstretched in a small clearing as another male approached from the rear, climbed on top of him and began wriggling and scratching his flanks with long fearsome claws. The crowd of onlookers laughed with amusement, we quickly shot images and moved on along the scanty forest path. Hidden in the trees , a timid deer nibbled grass and leaves. One interesting tree was a cotton tree. From its boughs hung large soft fluffy balls of material that looked like cotton candy.The trail looped around and up a hill ; we trudged along the slippery path in the soaring heat. Every few yards we came across a set of tracks, marked with long, deep grooves from claws...the dragons had been there.
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