The tour started in Mataram, crossing the island by bus with stops at rarely visited villages and communities. Mr. Perama, a professor at Denpasar University, has helped various local economies by scheduling stops at these towns and villages. The snorkelling in and around Komodo is absolutely magnificent and the islands in the area look positively prehistoric. Unlike the western part of the Indonesian archipelago, East Nusa Tenggerra is very dry, quite barren and brown. Once on Komodo, we checked into our bunkhouse, which was a wooden box on stilts.
Rats are quite busy during the night, dancing across the ceiling and scaling the inner walls.
The park service men carried long forked sticks that came in quite handy, as we were about to witness. Suddenly out of the trees and lumbering straight for us was a massive lizard about eight feet long, flicking its long white tongue while making a hissing sound. The warden prodded the beast with the stick and it lurched off with surprising alacrity into a dry riverbed to join a seething mass of fellow dragons. I suspect it knew that the morning meal would soon be served. It was astonishing how quickly the 10 or so lizards completely devoured the poor goat.