June 12, 2010 Boating to Flores Island through Komodo National Park Day Two

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June 12, 2010 Boating to Flores Island through Komodo National Park
Day Two

This is night number three of the live-aboard experience. We set sail from Gili Trawangan and are taking this sail boat one way to Labuanbajo on Flores. Seventeen dives, eleven passengers, eight nights (since we are one-way it will be five nights), four crewmen, and three dive instructors. We are passing by unpopulated islands, an occasional volcano, and gorgeous sunrises and sunsets. A school of dolphins just swam along the boat, leaping into the air as we cheered them on. We are loving this experience! I have never even spent one night on a boat, so it is all new to me.

The highlight of the trip is supposed to be tomorrow when we explore Komodo National Park, home to the monitor lizard the Komodo Dragon whose bite is deadly because of the cest-pool of bacteria in its mouth. Oh—and of course the great diving that is here and the reason most people travel on these live-aboards.

All the dives so far have been training for the dives tomorrow since the currents can be strong and can change on you in a second. We both did our first deep dive of down to 30 meters (about 90 feet). We’ve been doing negative entries which is back-rolls off the boat and going straight down in a fast descent as a way to avoid surface currents. So far, all the dives have been fun. And I’m not totally scared to death all the time. That’s a major event for me and diving. And here’s a little interesting fact about the deep dive. We took a can of Coke down to the sea bottom to see how the color red doesn’t show up that far below underwater.

The days on board when we are not diving are quite lazy and wonderful. We sun, read, chat, eat, look out at the horizon. And night-time is amazing. The stars are crazy bright and most of us are bringing our mattresses up on deck to sleep. The first night I kept waking up because I didn’t want to miss the sunrise. Once the sun rose, I woke up Adam, and we watched it a bit before dozing back off.

The first night a sudden rainstorm sent most folks back under deck. (It’s the dry season here, but for some reason this year it is still raining a little.) Adam and I stayed up on deck with one other woman, Alex, who was also a little green and queasy. The rain and wind on the face felt great.

Oh—and for those who want to know about boats. It’s wooden. Has sails. Some engine that we have been running all the time. Yeah, I really don’t know anything about boats.

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Photos

Fellow Passengers
Here we all are taking the dingy for a little walk on this one island. Felt good to stretch our legs. We could not have asked for a better group of folks to travel with!

View from the Boat
We sailed by such lovely islands and here is a little volcano, too.

Charlotte Playing Up on the Deck
This is where we sunbathed and slept for most of the nights. Here Charlotte is playing a little hide-n-seek.

Sleeping on the Boat
The cabins were teentsy and a bit fumey, so most of us slept here on the floor. The wind kept everyone cozy and cool.

More Boat Photos
On top here is where we would sleep and sun.