Indonesia- Labuan Bajo and the possible pirate ship

The day started out so good.

Smoothie bowl with fruit from a little local bakery

This view for breakfast.

We went down to the dock to board our boat, which was supposed to be a really nice tourist boat.  Clean, cabins with AC, nice places to louge in the shade, the works. 

But instead

we boarded 

a pirate ship.  

Probably.

The guy who ran the tour company put us on the boat and sent us on our way before we really had the presence of mind to ask questions.

After a rocky and worrisome departure where the engine kind of worked and the youngest crew member was swimming in the water to pull the boat...we looked around.  No AC. Broken fans.  Bugs all over the mattresses.  Dirty boat.  Nowhere to sit, just a big box in the middle of the boat, and an upper deck for scorching yourself with the equatorial sun if you so chose.  Crew that did not speak English.

OK wait what oops.  Save us.

I have worked on boats before and I was used to a very different maritime system than they used in Labuan Bajo, Indonesia.  For some reason I thought maritime stuff was kind of standard around the world since everyone uses the same oceans.  Turns out nope.  Our boat had no radios, no GPS, no charts, and an anchor lashed together with some sturdy fish line, tied to a short-ish frayed blue rope.  The youngest crew member had the unfortunate job of being the anchor hauler.  

This was no safety-first Alaskan whale watching boat like the ones I was used to.

After observing this anchor/swimming boy situation for a while I realized they had quite a complicated system of using this shoddy anchor to maneuver the boat because the boat could only go forwards, unlike most boats I'm used to.  If your boat only goes forwards, how do you back out of a slip?  You rig up your anchor so it can pull you backward, and you send our your swimming boy.  Though this system worked well, and the captain proved to be incredibly skilled, it felt VERY unsafe.

For most of the trip we also had no idea if there were any life jackets aboard, or if there was a life raft (never found out about the raft, the life jackets did magically appear part way through the last day).

ALL of the maritime safety bells were going off in my head and it was very hard to relax.  It was also extremely EXTREMELY easy to imagine our crew were pirates, and this boat was normally used for other mysterious activities as it clearly wasn't set up for tourists, nor did it seem to be set up for fishing or cargo...so that leaves??????

Anchor situation and the least-friendly pirate

The vocabulary of the captain was mostly limited to the words "snorkling" "trekking" "Komodo Dragon" and "big manta" so he was able to accurately direct us as to what activity we were supposed to do each time the boat stopped somwhere.

The first stop was a completely secluded cove with the best snorkling I have ever done in my life.  On the way into the water I lost one of my flippers.  Remember that, it comes back into the story later in a moment of delightful vengence.  

The snorkling though, it was like being in a National Geographic movie.  All kinds and colors of coral I had never seen or heard of, and a million zillion little fish zipping everywhere!  We would get caught up in a certain section of coral and just sit and watch the fish interact.  It seemed like every time we turned our heads there was something new and amazing that had snuck up while we weren't watching.   I am not even coming close to describing it.  It was at least as good as Finding Nemo :)

I must say though, it was a little hard not to think about how vulnerable we were, jumping off the boat into the water.  It would be the easiest thing in the world to leave us there, no phones, no money, no way to get back to the mainland, etc.  I just tried not to let paranoia get the best of me and appreciate the practice in vulnerability.

When we got back to the boat, it wouldn't start.  But the pirates had already unhooked from the mooring and we were drifting towards shore, so of course they dropped the anchor...right on the beautiful coral reef...After they dropped it, we kept moving...and I knew that anchor was dragging through all the beautiful coral we had just witnessed.  It was like a heart break with a kick to the stomach.  It seemed to me like the idea of environemntal conservation is still...how to say...deveoping...  After wating for an hour for the boat to start, Chelsea I texted the tour company and was like GET US OUT OF HERE or at last give us some money back!!  And they were like no and no, sorry have a nice trip!

They did explain that their normal boat was already full so they chartered this guy to take us today.  That would have been nice to know.

Throughout the trip we did a  lot of processing.  The irony of the whole thing was no matter how bad or scared we felt, we both admitted we were seeing the most amazing things we had ever seen in our lives.  The other thing was, even though our boat was dirty and broken and crewed by probable pirates...they were very friendly and accomodating pirates.  Even though so much seemed wrong...we couldn't really complain, and we couldn't help but enjoy ourselves for the most part.

Our next stop was Rinca Island, one of the very few homes of the famous Komodo Dragon!  

There were a bunch of them hanging out by the kitchen and they were terrifying, I tell you what.

Chelsea takes a picture of a dragon under the kitchen

It was not out guide's first day taking Komodo Dragon pictures, obviously.  He knew what he was doing.

JK they were super lazy, and we had a guide with us, probably mostly to make us feel better...and explain in great detail about Komodo Dragon sex.  And take us on a 'trek' to the top of a hill where I had my first experience of being hotter than I have ever been in my life.  My body sweat in a way I did not know was possible and it was a little alarming at first.

I don't know if you can see, but even with 50 SPF, frequent reapplication, and spending most of the day in the shade my legs were burnt half was through the first day.  There was no escaping that sun.

Chelsea was a wonderful traveling partner in the bad times and the good.

One of our favorite times of the trip came just as we were feeling very frustrated.  Our captain parked us next to a bunch of mangroves, and said we were going to 'wait for flying foxes.'  Oookkkk so bats....were they going to come flying out of the trees all of a sudden like in a horror movie?  There were other boats parked around us and we could see and hear comfortable happy people laughing, and enjoying cold drinks on comfortable seats and hammocks while we sat on wooden box on a dirty pirate ship.  It was like a form of torture.

But then, we DID see the flyig foxes.  Huge, HUGE and eleganat soaring bats, thousands of them silently rose from the mangroves and streamed toward the mainland.  As they flew closely overhead we could see through their translucent wings.  They didn't flap like you would expect, but they soared and floated on the breeze, more like seagulls.  It was honestly one of the most awesome things I have ever seen.

As night was setting in all of the other boats started to leave, presunably to find a better place to sleep away from the mangrove forest filled with mosquitos.  But our crew made no motion to leave.  At one point I asked them if we were going to stay there all night, and they were like yes, stay here tonight yes.  We felt resigned to that but...whatever.  Until we realized that we would be sleeping outside, and how bad the bugs would be.  We tried to communicate this to the crew, and they snapped into action to leave immediately...like they were just waiting for us to say the word...confusing.

And then we were sailing.  In the dark.  With no lights, no map, no GPS, no radio, and I am fairly certain not even a compass.  In a place we knew there were many many boats, islands, and reefs, etc.  It was like a nightmare.  Had we asked them to leave too late?  Were they doing something dangerous just to appease us?  Once again, I was very very nervous, and I had no way to know what was going on or how certain the captain was about his plan, whatever it was.  

I have not been all that into church lately, but in that moment, all I wanted to do was sing hymns.  So we sat on the front of the motoring boat in complete darkness and sang and sang.  And that was when the second most amazing moment happened.  The ocean started to glow.  At first I thought it was just pieces of seaweed reflecting the lights from the wheelhouse.  But it was glowing green, and sometimes out in front of us, too far to reflect light.  It came in a moment of such fear, and was so haunting and magical.  Again, I don't really have words to describe it.  We just watched.

I'm gonna just file that experience away for the next time I wonder if God is there.

We found a peaceful safe place to sleep next to other boats, which made us feel a bit better.  We dragged the least scary-looking mattresses up to the top deck to sleep.  We watched the stars for a long time and finally felt some peace.  Looking back on it now, it really was a magficent experience.

Stay tuned for day 2 of the boat trip and the end of Labuan Bajo!