Komodo - Kanawa

Kanawa - a small island just outside the Komodo national park. This was our home for three days. The island features a gorgeous beach and reef for snorkeling and you can walk around it in only 40 minutes. 

There are only a few bungalows and tents available on Kanawa and we chose a tent to stay in. 

The jetty that leads you to the boats which take you out to the many great diving spots.
Close by this jetty it was already possible to observe many kinds of different fish - just as if you were looking into a gigantic aquarium.

For example we could watch juvenile black tip reef sharks from the jetty or directly from the beach.

A view at sunset over the small settlement on the island. The main part of the reef stretches from the left out into the ocean.

Beach on Kanawa. The small hut is the little bar on the island.

At night we met at the campfire and it turned out that many people could play instruments and even brought some. With the guitar, ukulele, melodica, harmonica, band singers and trashcan drums we made music all night long.

DIVING! Yay, Nikola got her license. Both of us went on a few dives and it was just great. The reefs in the Komodo national park were very healthy and swarming with marine life. Among the sea creatures we saw were lion-, parrot-, clown-, cuttle-, trumpet- and pufferfish, barracudas, sharks (black and white tip reef sharks), turtles, dolphins and many more. The large schools of fish almost always present at the reefs were particularly impressive. Even for Flo, who had already dived at the Great Barrier Reef and in Thailand, this was a unique experience. 

We also went to Rinca to visit the Komodo dragons in their natural habitat. Pretty big and scary. (This lazy fellow was almost domestic and enjoying its lunch break close to the rangers station.) 

The guide told us that it would be highly unlikely to see dragons in the wild because we visited the island around noon and the large monitors are usually not very active during the hottest hours of the day. Furthermore, it was mating season at the time of our visit and most dragons move to more remote parts to reproduce. Still, we were lucky. This one we encountered in the woods is easy to find on the picture...

... but can you also spot the dragon here? The picture reminded Flo of the documentaries he had seen as a child: Komodo dragons going for a walk in the savanna. 

Food for the monitors. This poor deer had some kind of worm in his ear and was bleeding a bit. The smell  of blood attracts the Komodo dragons and they can track it for miles. They are not in a hurry and will just linger and wait until the time is right. This deer is dead already. (Here you can find a video about the dragon's hunting techniques.)

A nice view over the island from (almost) the top of Rinca.

Sunset on the way back to the mainland after three wonderful days on Kanawa.