We set out on our dragon hunt at 7am, after fortifying ourselves with a breakfast of fried noodles and egg. The first task was a two-and-a-half hour boat trip to Rinca island, on a wooden fishing boat whose engine chugged deeply, rather like a techno rave, and shook the whole vessel. On the way we saw a fishing eagle perched upon his own tiny island and a pod of dolphins out to sea.
Once on Rinca island we signed in at the Ranger Station and then set off on our trek, skirting first around a crowd of locals who had gathered outside the kitchen for hand-outs. This was the first truly sunny day for ages and the air was thick with a steamy heat that sapped our energy. We hiked through thick forest, past dragon nests that looked huge and prehistoric. Our trail took us past a number of mud wallows, and in one we found a magnificently somnolent water buffalo. The damp heat wouldn’t leave us alone, and now our path led up onto the wide savannah grasses that cover most of the island. We plodded on under a baking sun, the tall palms dotted among the grass providing little shade. It had been raining continuously for two days, but now the earth was cracked and parched wherever it showed. It was hard to see why anything would leave the relative comfort of the forest for this furnace.
The rest of the trek back seemed longer and hotter still, but we had encountered our dragon and even if these days there isn’t any great challenge or adventure to it, the
I should really point out that the “crowd of locals who had gathered outside the kitchen” were actually a heap of about ten big komodo dragons who show up every day at the scent of meat, though are apparently not fed. So we really had our first encounter with dragons within five minutes of stepping off the boat. But that would hardly make for an exciting dragon hunt, would it?
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