We decided to take the tour boat to Loh Buaya from Labuanbajo.  Our guide was Hendrik Abur of GOTOKOMODO TOURS.

These are the people the dragons have taken down...

Just kidding, you can donate money to the park and they plant a tree in your name.  The dragons get to about 3metres long and are really monitor lizards, really big lizards.  Their saliva has a potent bacteria after they have bitten their victim, such as a water buffalo, they wait until the animal gets sick and dies; then they feast.  We saw a smaller one bite a snake and it only took a few minutes for the snake to die, unfortunately he was in the bushes so the snake could only be seen when he shook it and then it was gone.  Komodo Dragons have an acute sense of smell, they can smell blood as far away as 5km.  The female lays from 20 to 30 eggs and buries them and protects them for three months the actual incubation period is nine months.  The small dragons spend their first five years in the trees, they are considered more dangerous as they can jump.  The small ones catch the rats on the tin roofs, snakes, insects, anything to keep them alive until they get big enough not to be looked at as food.  We didn’t see any dragons on our walk.  We left the park and went to a bay for some very welcome snorkelling as it is very, very hot.

There were a lot of fish I had not seen before the coral was so so but the fish plentiful. 

New clams I have not seen before.

This was a cleaning station, the fish would get cleaned by the small fish on his side, once done they would swim off.

A new type of clown fish.

The next day we were off to South Rinja and this is where we got to see the Komodo Dragons in their natural habitat unencumbered by humans….well except for us interlopers.  This was off the beach where we were anchored.  We went out in the dinghy to get some photos.  There were four of them.