These 3 days saw us circle through the National Park for 8 dives, finishing up at Rinca. We started in the North of the park, and made a check dive at the Passage, a beautiful dive site in between the islands of Komodo and Gili Lawa Darat. Lovely reef to start and make sure everyone's happy in the water, followed by a drift through the channel, plenty of fusiliers, sweetlips and snapper around.
Time for a beach visit, and we made our way onto Komodo to chill out on the beach, wander up to the viewpoint for panoramic shots across the islands, and get rid of some of the rubbish.
Castle Rock was our 2nd dive of the day, always a fishy dive site and this time was no exception, plenty of white tip and grey reef sharks, and massive schools of banner fish, surgeonfish, fusiliers and trevallies swirling round us as we hovered and watched the action. 2 fab dives already, so we headed to the Cauldron for a bit of a drift dive, there wasn't too strong a current, which meant we could really enjoy all of the stunning orange tree soft corals along the walls of the dive site.
Another delicious dinner served up by Jos and Abdul, and the rest of the evening was spent chatting & relaxing on the sun deck. Fiona, Jillian & Seb had some homework to do for their fish identification dive the next morning, so they spent some time figuring out how they were going to know which fish wa switch tomorrow!
Day 2 of the Komodo liveaboard, Fiona's birthday, many happy returns! We got off to a good start with a lovely dive at Crystal Bommie, thankfully we had a rising tide so we could explore the western side of the dive site without much current, beautiful pinnacles covered in soft and hard corals, a little black tip cruising round, and big schools of sweetlips. Moving down into the centre of the park we dived the northern side of Batu Bolong, a huge pinnacle in the middle of the strait, 2 big hawksbill turtles graced us with their presence, as well as lionfish and scorpionfish galore, and many beautifully coloured anthias all over the reef.
Tatawa Kecil next, huge schools of red snapper around the overhangs and rocks of the western side of this island, unfortunately the current changed direction which led to a shorter dive for us, but it was a fishy one nonetheless!
Night dive at Wainilu, first night dive for Seb doing his Advanced Adventurer course, and a chance for some muck diving. Full moon led to a slightly brighter night dive than usual so not so much bioluminescence, but the dusky skies were ideal lighting to search for the macro things, and plenty of cool critters were spotted, loads of different crustaceans, and a little yellow clown anglerfish was a really nice find for people as well.
Final day of the trip, and our last dive was at Tengah, and we didn't want to finish the dive! There was so much to see, and the corals at this dive site are beautiful, really healthy stag horn coral reef across the plateau, and when you weren't looking at coral, plenty of marine life to watch, including schools of bumphead parrotfish, chevron barracuda and, for some of our lucky divers, an inquisitive devil ray.
All the diving done, time just for breakfast, and then a trek on Rinca to search for Komodo dragons. The dragons are going into mating season at the moment, so can be a tad harder to spot, since the females are off digging burrows to hide their eggs, and the males are trying to find the females! But it was a successful walk through the forest with a couple of sightings, and there were some dragons resting in the shade around the ranger offices for photo opportunities afterwards.
Back to the Jaya, and time to say our goodbyes as we make our way back to Labuan Bajo! A fantastic trip, with a great group of people :)
Come Dive Komodo with Wicked Diving
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