Location: Rinca Island, Komodo
Imagine getting woken up at 2 am, immediately going back to sleep, of course, just to be woken again 10 minutes later because you have an anchor watch. Still asleep, you go on deck and take the place of the previous person. Half a km behind, a boat is making sounds. In the sky, you see the biggest shooting star ever! And then You hear something in the water; it sounds like someone is breathing loudly and swimming toward the boat. Your brain is not fully awake yet, so you think: maybe it’s the flag or someone snoring or the waves You hear the boat behind Argo’s being louder, and you can recognize some men talking. The sounds are coming closer to the boat, and in the water, you see a shadow moving. You take the spotlight and flash the shadow! The brown body goes directly into the water and moves away, but it’s coming around. You flash it again, and it goes away. It was not human. During the rest of your watch, you are alert to every sound, every flying fish, and every light flashing. When it’s time to wake up the next person, the boat behind starts to move in your direction. You run to wake up, and when you come back, the boat is near but going away. You are ready with the spotlight when you see the smaller boat without light following the first one. The smaller one is coming closer to Argo. Before you have to use the light, it goes away. And I slept well after that! The morning was nice; Spencer made us some French toast for breakfast. After cleaning up, we went to the Komodo National Park, where we got to see some Komodo dragons walking around. The guides, armed with sticks, were there to defend us and to give us information about these animals. We walked in a desert environment, which was a huge difference for us. We used to see more water than land. We even saw a few monkeys! === There are bats around the boat. I’m coming back!=== After the dragons, we prepared to leave for Kalong! We had lunch, Leadership, and Marine biology.
When we arrived, someone on a small boat, the one that sounded like a helicopter, came to visit us and sell us souvenirs, but we all agreed that the only thing we really needed was a cold drink and ice cream! The afternoon was calm, we were reading, doing homework and cooking. All were alert to see if some Flying foxes (huge bats!) were going to come out of the mangroves. When Rescue scenario!! We ate some chill hot dogs for dinner. The squeeze question was: what did you bring to this trip that you still haven’t used? And we ended the night with a big forced laugh that transformed into a real one. Oh, and we saw small bats around the boat, not the flying foxes, but still.