Indonesia: Dragons and Wobbegongs

 

My first impression upon arriving in Indonesia:  I've got 1,000,000 Indonesian Rupiah in my wallet....life is good!  Oh wait, that's about $65 US.....

Our first stop in Indonesia was Komodo National Park.  We stayed at a dive resort in the Park and did 6 dives in 2 days.  The visibility was awesome, the water was 80-82 degrees, and the coral reefs and abundance of marine life were like nothing we’ve ever seen.  

On our last day in Komodo we took a trip to see the famed Komodo Dragons.  About 1500 Dragons live on Komodo Island, along with roughly the same number of people.  The villagers have to be on the lookout constantly, as the Dragons come into their village almost every day looking for goats and chickens to eat (though not frequently, Dragons have been known to kill people too).  Their favorite food is the deer (Javan rusa) which are native to the island (they can even eat water buffalo!):

 

Seems improbable, I know, until you see how big the Dragons actually are.  This guy is about 3 meters (10 feet) long :

And his claws look pretty scary.....

After Komodo, it was on to Bali for some R&R.  In truth, Bali did not match the image we both had in our minds of a tropical paradise, with swaying palm trees and quiet beaches.  I think we must have confused it with Fiji.....

Having spent the past month plus in pretty remote and lightly populated areas, where seeing a few dozen people in one place seemed like a crowd, Bali came as quite a shock to our system.  Though we stayed in a neighborhood (Seminyak) that was supposedly in the "quieter" part of Bali (as opposed to Kuta), the crowds and traffic were kind of overwhelming.  

The narrow streets were jam-packed with cars and and motorbikes, and lined with shops, restaurants, massage parlors (two big thumbs up for the 4 hand Balinese massage!), Hindu temples, and more tattoo parlors than I’ve ever seen.  Despite the subtlety and artistry on offer, I haven’t given into the temptation……yet

While we spent most of our time poolside at our hotel, which was an oasis of calm, we did venture out for 1 day of sightseeing in Ubud, the most popular tourist destination.  During the 2 hour drive inland we passed hundreds upon hundreds of artisan shops displaying amazing crafts- stone carving, wood carving, jewelry making, painting, rattan weaving, mask making and bone carving.  Unfortunately (or fortunately) our luggage had no space to bring any of it home...

We also passed beautiful terraced rice paddies

Visited the Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary, a nature reserve and temple complex in Ubud that is home to more than 1,200 Balinese long-tailed macaques, which are considered sacred by the local Balinese people (for you biotechies out there, in the laboratory, a long-tailed macaques is known as a cynomolgus monkey, which is one of the most widely used nonhuman primate species in research - a fact I most definitely did not mention while at the Sanctuary.....).

And we visited a coffee plantation that makes the most expensive coffee in the world, called Kopi Luwak. Here's Melanie conducting a taste test between Kopi Luwak v. Arabica.

So why is Kopi Luwak the most expensive coffee - sometimes referred to as the "Holy Grail of Coffees" - you might ask?  Well, it has to do with how it is processed.  The beans are eaten by a civet cat: 

They ferment as they pass through the civet's intestines, and are then collected and cleaned (multiple times we were assured!) before being roasted and ground.  Thus giving rise to its colloquial name:  Catpoopcino!

After Bali, it was on to Raja Ampat, an archipelago off the northwestern tip of New Guinea.  Raja Ampat is comprised of over 1,500 small islands, cays and shoals, and is considered the most biodiverse marine ecosystem in the world - its estimated that 75% of all coral species that exist can be found there.  No surprise that it routinely shows up as one of the top - if not the top - destinations for scuba divers.

We did 14 dives over 5 1/2 days there (our last dive was my 50th since getting certified in January of last year).  The visibility was amazing, and the water was 84-86 degrees!  The coolest creature we saw was definitely the "tasselled wobbegong", a type of shark that we had never even heard of before:

And while a GoPro most definitely does not do justice to it, happening upon an "eel garden", with hundreds of eels poking their heads out of the sand was both cool and somehow kind of eerie.....

Again with the GoPro caveat, the marine life was mind-blowing

Good luck finding the fish in this picture:

And the coral was unbelievable in color, variety and size!

Sadly, we said goodbye to Raja Ampat this afternoon (though something tells me we'll probably be back).  Tomorrow morning we catch our flights to Borneo for our last adventure on this trip - a 2 week stint on a volunteer program at an orangutan sanctuary.  Can't imagine we'll be bored!  

I'll circle back with a final post when our stint there has ended and we are preparing for our flights home.  In the meantime, to those of you who are celebrating Rosh Hashana, here's to a Happy and Healthy New Year filled with lots of new and exciting adventures!