Monday 23 February – bumped into a dragon on the beach

While we were having breakfast we noticed the phinisi Scuba Junkie that Max ( Noah’s friend) works for had anchored across the other side. We sent Max a message and it turned out he was on his week off, but he told us we were lucky to be where we are in such a sheltered spot as the authorities had banned all dive boats going out in this weather until the 25th. Very grateful we are here and feel very secure. It really did not feel so bad here.

We went for a lovely snorkel around the little island next to us. Lots of lovely soft coral, a shame we did not have the Go Pro with us as there was a lovely brilliant white anemone with tiny little orange clown fish in it. The current was not too bad and the visibility was ok. It looked very healthy coral, with mainly small fish. It must be a good diving area as Scuba Junkie did morning and afternoon dives, one near us. In the afternoon a huge big sailing boat arrived, we think it is an upmarket charter and feel like we have seen it before in NZ.

Late afternoon we decided to go across to the other side and walk the long beach there. The trees on the beach are enormous and must be so old, it is a volcanic beach so the beach is brown. We managed to tie JeldiJeldi up and went for a good long beach walk. There is big run off from the mountains we crossed three streams coming onto the beach. Great sadness was the amount of plastic rubbish everywhere, this pristine wilderness no human habitation in the whole area but the beach covered in plastic. We had to duck under branches of trees growing on the water’s edge. As I was walking closer to the land Rowan told me I should keep an eye out for Komodo dragons, as it is advised to not get closer than 3ms. Literally 5 minutes later I looked at the bank and there was a dragon. It was not huge like the one we saw on Komodo Island but big enough for us to take real notice! We were nearly at the end of the beach and I chickened out I wanted to return, I did not want the dragon to trap us on that side of the beach if it decided to go down onto the beach. Rowan was very happy with my decision! Poor thing was lying in amongst a whole lot of rubbish.

On our return we had a quick drive to our beach which only really shows up at low tide. We were amused to see the red life jacket has been turned into a signpost, warning people to beware of the dragons. Back on the boat we had a lovely evening sitting up front watching the two deer coming down for some frolicking in the water in the cooler temperature. They must be the same two as yesterday, in exactly the same spot. They are called Timor deer and are very good swimmers, no wonder they were enjoying splashing about so much. The osprey were about too and we heard all sorts of bird noises, it could have been a frogmouth.

We finished the day by watching Attenborough’s Ocean program, seems appropriate. Noah has just watched it and reminded us about it, like he said it makes you want to cry at the tragedy of large scale fishing, but there is also hope where the sea has recovered in relatively short time. I’m feeling less and less inclined to eat fish and definitely will not eat scallops any more.