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Published: September 19th 2011
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The week before when I was staying at the Seminary in Kisol, Father Fabi told me about some big lizards that could be found at Riung on the north coast of Flores which I thought sounded like they might be sail-finned lizards (
Hydrosaurus). Another person who came visiting whilst I was there told me they were very common and anybody in the town could take me to see them (although he had never actually been to Riung himself, and neither had Father Fabi). I didn't think I would get to Riung, but then with the changes in my itinerary to eliminate Sumba and spend an extra week on Flores it turned out I had the time after all. After the excitement of visiting Istana Ular, I spent the night in Ruteng and the next morning took a travel car back to Kisol. I could have stayed in Bajawa en route to Riung but I liked the Seminary and its only two hours before Bajawa anyway. Father Fabi was absent and the girls who work at the Seminary doing the cooking and cleaning don't speak any English, but they were happy to see me back. Everyone seemed to have become sick while
I was away and there was a lot of coughing all day. I had intended on going back to the forest to have another look for Flores hawk-eagle but it was just too darn hot so I did nothing instead. Because I was free I became the English teacher for the afternoon. The woman who lives across the road came over as well, and we all had lots of fun mangling both English and Indonesian. At the end of the day the woman from across the road had to leave, but before she did she finally plucked up the courage to ask if I had any medicine because she was sick with Typhoid....
The next morning I took the bus to Bajawa and then sat around in the city terminal till 1.30 waiting for the 1 o'clock Riung bus to leave. The way to Riung is three hours over what had at one point in its life been a sealed road, probably back when the Dutch first arrived, but now not so much. At least it wasn't one of the tooth-loosening rock-jumble roads so common over here. Inexplicably for the last half-hour the road is in pretty good shape
with just the odd hole here and there. Its as if ten years ago they decided to re-seal the whole thing, got a fifth of the way before running out of money, then just went "oh well that will do for now" but forgot to come back later and finish the job.
Riung isn't really a town as such, more a spread-out village, and it has a surprising abundance of hotels and homestays. As I discovered this is because there's a popular diving/snorkelling site on a group of islands just offshore. Everyone I pass says "When did you get here? You need a boat?" "No I don't need a boat" "Yes you need a boat" "No I don't need a boat" "Yes you do" etc and so on.
The bus dropped me off at a place called Nirvana Bungalows where the asking price was 150,000 rupiah per night. I walked around a bit and found the Tamri Beach Homestay (not actually anywhere near a beach, mind) for just 65,000 a night. The price is right but unfortunately its not particularly near any food source. After a while I found a restaurant called "Murah Meriah" (say it out loud)
which I liked because from my seat I counted no fewer than forty geckoes on the ceiling. It appears to be the only restaurant in Riung not attached to a hotel and it caters only to tourists because the locals wouldn't pay that amount for their food. The food is very good though. In Riung the roosters start crowing at 3 o'clock in the morning, and then at 5 o'clock all the dogs in the village begin a chorus of howling. By then its time to get up anyway.
When I first arrived at the Tamri Beach Homestay there were three English tourists there. I asked if they had seen any big lizards. "No....er, are you a big lizard enthusiast?" came the worried reply. I explained what I was there for, which made them think I was even stranger. I mean, honestly, who on earth goes looking for animals on their holidays instead of lying on the beach by day and drinking at bars by night? Mutually incomprehensible, that's what "normal" tourists and people like me are. Imagine if I'd told them about my search for the Giant Rat! The next morning I ran into one of the girls
before they left. "Good luck with finding your big lizard" she said. I replied that because I couldn't get any good answers from local people I was just going to head out walking till I found some forest, and half the fun is in the search anyway. "Really?" she said, obviously more than a bit incredulous, "walking around in the forest all day is fun?"
Nobody in town could give me a non-contradictory answer about the lizards that supposedly occur here. Some said there were many, some said very few, some said there were none and I would need to go very far away to find any. I had drawn a sail-finned lizard to show people what I was talking about, but even when specifically pointing out the frill on the back most people were obviously still thinking I was asking about Komodo dragons (here, incidentally, they are still called
buaya darat "land crocodiles", whereas in the west of Flores they are now ubiquitously known as "Komodos"). Anyway, I basically just went walking out of the village to see what I could find. The landscape here is all barren brown hills with scattered patches of scrub and palm trees, almost identical to Komodo and Rinca actually. I saw a few common open-country birds but the only reptiles were small skinks. On balance of answers people along the way gave me, I don't think there are any big lizards - agamids or monitors - left around Riung.
A few people on my walk, however, told me that there was another small village called Torong Padang about 8 (or 10 or 12) km away where there were Komodo dragons. I did want to see some mainland dragons so I thought I'd better go there and check it out after lunch. Unbelievably though, there wasn't a motorbike to be found to take me! None at the marketplace, and any passing by either already had passengers or they wouldn't stop. I tried for an hour and then gave up. Like the fox and his grapes, I decided that most likely if I did get to Torong Padang there wouldn't be any dragons there anyway and it would have been a wasted trip.
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