....indeed I woke up very slowly with extremely tired eyes and not able to string a sentence together. It was still dark. I slept better on perfectly still waters with the boat not moving. Although I was quite cold with the winds blowing through the window directly in my face when lying on my one side so I put my jumper over my face.
We were shattered and went to bed at 9.30pm, some of the young ‘awesome crowd’ travellers group didn’t get to sleep until at least 12am. Haha whoops! Does that mean we are old; Ear plugs and early nights? And Ellie has grey hair...! It’s most definitely a sign!

My usual (unaware) mean stare at Ellie this morning when she carefully pokes my arm to wake me up, afraid that I’ll bite her when I open my eyes. It was still bloody dark with stars out I was not ready for wakey wakey time!

We got the mini boat over to the shore and didn’t bother to wait for the rest of the gang so we just started to walk up the mountain on Padar island, there were lots of people around and by the time we had reached half way a jumper wasn’t needed and neither was my head torch I fished around to find last night.

We were surrounded by sea. This island was not inhabited by anyone just the odd tiny animal and bees or beetles the size of a new potato that don’t have space awareness, one flew straight into my forehead.
The sunrise was really nice, the sky was mixtures of oranges, purples and reds. Ellie did a time lapse on her phone of the sunrise which looks pretty cool. We seen dolphins playing around in the water, we were done after an hour or so and walked back down the fluffy mountains. Ellie claims I’m secretly a mountain goat because I find easy to walk up and down the mountains and rocks, I had to learn how to use them properly; I had no choice when I was younger with dad! If I didn’t I’d get left behind on a mountain somewhere lol. Ellie’s got bambi feet hehe, I told her the reason why she’s falling is because she’s walking down on her tip toes. The bambi and the mountain goat - what a combination haha!!

Breakfast - banana pancake! Yum-mummy! These men are so good at making dinner in such a small space next to two toilets, definitely not the cleanest of places in the world but the food is bloody good coming out of it. But you always have a complainer somewhere along the line, OR a bloody vegan... these vegans are like ants they get anywhere and if not stopped will take over the world. Rubbish things!

We went back to bed to chill and listen to music, I wasn’t ready to socialise with people just yet. Even after Ellie fed me three cups of tea and tried to get me to eat a few biscuits - her and biscuits, she’s such a sweet tooth!

She poked me for the second time this morning at 10am to wake up for our next stop to Rinca Island, we were going to find more Komodo Dragons. This time it would be easier because the island is a lot smaller with the same if not a bigger population of dragons. Again, the island was full of fluffy mountains but a lot less green. We weren’t allowed to get in the water because it had salt water crocodiles in it. - that’s enough to make me not want to get in!

They were right, there were loads of Komodo dragons. Big ones little ones, lots of big fat males. They were all just lazing about, they usually eat early morning and late evening and laze about in the sun in the days to increase their body temperature. You could see some of them had eating some sort of buffalo or deer or wild horse because their stomachs were huge!
Then we seen a Komodo nest with a Komodo dragon in it digging the eggs further under the ground. It was pretty cool, we had not been there long and already seen way more than the actual Komodo National Park island. Then we walked up hill to a view point, bambi was off again with those feet dancing around on the rubble lol. I’m not sure what she does with them, haha!

After an encounter with another dragon at the top of the hill on the view point and a cracking view of the islands and the lovely white crystal clear water we were back down to the start/finish line.
One of the ‘everything is awesome’ travellers got stuck in the toilet because a young Komodo dragon walked in there. Absolutely histerical, all you could here was her screaming and some of the girls shouting that there was a Komodo dragon (we all thought they were making a fuss over a Komodo dragon lying on the floor) the guides all sat under the tree eating lunch, didn’t actually click on to what was happening for about 2-3 minutes until our guide shouted something in Indonesian and they went running shouting ‘komodo, Komodo, komodo’ hysterical! It wandered back out on its own in the end but I’m sure she was stuck standing on top of a toilet or something. It’s like lifeguarding I suppose, your trained in knowing what to do but until something happens it does take a minute or so to realise what’s happening (not that has even happened to me....) you just think people are messing about and not serious.
They’re so cool to see, definitely a tucked bucket moment list for us there!

Another chill with some cracking lunch, boiled eggs cut in half with veg and some sauce drizzled over them and another dish that was boiled veg in a peanut sauce. Yummy in our tummies!!

We chilled downstairs after lunch out of the sun and a little peace from the ‘everything’s amazing’ travellers.

We stopped in at Kelor Island for swimming and snorkelling for our last stop. Again, nobody lives on this island only the local islander to come and sell Bintang and Cola to tourists. There aren’t many tourists in this part of the world though which is pretty nice, the sea isn’t full of tourists boats just the odd few that have the adventurists on them cruising this far into Indonesia for a break from the local tourist trail.
We didn’t snorkel because the masks aren’t great and the snorkelling isn’t world class so we just chilled in the freezing cold water, Ellie had her bambi toes out again slipping over the coral and stones - she’s so funny! Haha.

We got on the boat just in time for the first big fat black cloud we had seen this trip. It was indeed coming for us full of rain, captain was too busy with his snorkel scrubbing the side of the boat to notice. (Aha-aha-aha) the rain did catch us a little whilst we waited and we were going to be cruising straight into its path to get to Labuan Bajo.
We only had around 45 minutes till we docked and finished this adventure!

It rained for the next 45 minutes, we all had to go downstairs in main cabin where we eat. Honestly if it had rained whilst we were on this boat we wouldn’t have ended with the same amount of people as we had started with. The cabin was so crowded and there was water seeping in through the deck above because it’s just slays of wood nailed together and painted over.

When we docked we had to carry our bags on our backs by climbing over three boats and wobbling down a small rickety ladder, safe to say it was probably the most adventurous part of the trip. It was funny but bloody hard work. Climb over the top deck to the next boat then down a ladder backwards and then over to the third boat (only this was higher) and we had to climb with a rope up and over onto the deck, I think I yanked the electrical cable instead of the rope...
then down a rickety plank of wood that was wet and slippery. All whilst with our rucksacks on our front and back of us and whilst most of the crew from the boats sat and watched. Hilarious. Bambi was fantastic climbing up and down she tried to take some sort of detour, instead of climbing down a ladder she wanted to jump of the side of the top deck on the second boat to the third boat, with her 18kilo back pack on. (She’s so adventurous) everyone just kept shouting no at her so in the end she had to swivel her nervous bottom off the deck and climb the ladder. The most guinea pig screeches we have heard from her in a few days haha.
The next obstacle was to dodge the very large puddles in the dock and get to the hostel, which wasn’t far up the road but we continued schreeches from bambi and me just laughing at her behind. I think the woolly jumper she had on wasn’t cooling her down enough... haha! Dim problem, we got to the hostel in no time - a little sweaty albeit but a fresh shower and a change of clothes and then time for some food down the road and to connect to the outside world! Much to our very little or no surprise no one really noticed we had gone (the rents already knew where we were)
There was no conversation in either of us tonight, I was feeling a little sea sick or land sick should I say, swaying back and forth all the time. After dinner and a quick flick through the Internet it was definitely time for bed.
Beds were comfy but they dipped in the middle obviously because so many people on them every night for years and I pulled the short straw of having the bed under the air con...