We love the Komodo islands. The friendly boat community of Indonesian phinisis, or junk rigs, is based in Labuan Bajo which is the main harbour. Here we clearly stick out like a sore thumb, the only foreign cruising yacht, the only white family wandering through town repeatedly during the off-season. But it’s great to be surrounded by pirate ship-esque vessels, full of friendly “hello”s, pointing out free moorings that we can hop onto when we have to move, even offering for us to raft up. We’re currently sandwiched between two dive boats in fact.
These islands are famous for their endemic wildlife, the dragons, monkeys, deer, water buffalo, eagles and even whale sharks can be spotted here if you’re in the right place at the right time.
And, last week, with family visiting we got to swim with the mantas. We’ve seen mantas a few times before but the ones here are giants. They love the strong currents in these islands and flock to certain passes where they run fastest. There’s an area of reef so notorious for this that it’s known as “manta alley”. But, as it’s reef and rightly protected, we’ve never managed to stop there with our boat as we can’t anchor.
So on a tour boat instead we were finally able to witness them. James was taking Rocket out to snorkel with them while I minded the little ones and then we swapped and I was alone in the water. I dove down and found eleven giant mantas slowly, gently, and ever so gracefully dancing in the water beneath my feet. Their wingspan was greater than the width of our boat and the feeling and what I saw was just sheer magic.
And no, I wasn’t trying to take photos as the lenses of my own eyes were capturing that incredible view just fine.
But, for the rest of you, here is someone else’s image showing you the scale of them. Enjoy x
