What's up with the Donald?

Let me start off by saying that I don’t really want to be too political here.  I don’t really want a lot of shrill shout downs or shout outs about your preferred presidential candidate.  I really just want to make an observation.

We had a trek on our last day on the island of Komodo itself.  We were hiking up to a ridge that overlooked the water and the islands and islets beyond. This is it in this photo here.

We’d heard a lot about the dragons and the other wildlife on the island and had been walking in silence for a bit, when our ranger turned to us and said, “What’s going on with Donald Trump?”  

This is not the first time I’ve faced this question.

I’ve told you Indonesia loves Barack Obama. In their minds he is a great leader leading a great country.  Despite the evident anti-muslim sentiment shown in the media and the Kardashians, the United States is still a place to be aspired to.  Many people want to visit someday.

Our guide continued, “I was watching TV the other night and they were talking about Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.  They have the same hair, but they don’t think the same. He’s so rich, but I don’t think that Donald Trump likes foreigners.”

There is such a disparity here between the haves and everyone else.  Those with money have  lot of money. I mean private jet and lamborghini-for-your-birthday money.  The millions without live on a few dollars a day.

The general perception here is, if you’ve got a lot of money, you got it from a river of corruption and payoffs and perhaps with the help of the police who helped snuff out your competition.

I think it creates a great dissonance for Indonesians when a man with what they presume is corrupt money comes to the fore as a leader of a country and people they admire so.  How can this be?

So, right there on that ridge, in the middle of nowhere and 10,000 miles from the U.S election I found myself trying to steer the conversation elsewhere. No, Obama can't run again... It’s early...  There is a lot of time...  I say that I don’t want to say anything because Mr. Trump may be my boss someday.  

“Ha ha ha. Maybe he tell you 'Your fired!' Ha ha ha."

Sigh. That’s right.

Manta, Manta Manta!

Day two of our Komodo boat trip.  

We woke before sunrise to the return of the fruit bats who make their homes in the mangrove trees near our anchorage.

We got a breakfast  and after a brief stop in Komodo Village we head out to Manta Point. The first snorkeling spot of the day.  

Close to the point our guide let us know that seeing the mantas depends on the tides and that usually they come through to feed at high tide.  I asked what tide it was and he said he thought the tide was coming in.

We searched for a good 45 minutes for any sign the mantas may come, but they were nowhere to be found.  

Our boat trolled around to the other side of a small island. The guide said we could snorkel here while we waited. He assured us that the current would carry us around to the other side of the island and the boat would pick us up there.  Sure. Fine. Sounds great. So, in to the water we went. This reef, and many we saw were amazing.  Hundreds of different species of brightly colored fish and corals.  Tiny, tiny jellyfish pulsating in front of your mask. Smaller stingrays, parrot fish, angel fish. It was like being in “Finding Nemo”.  We saw seahorses, right off the beach  SEAHORSES! I’m telling you. We could reach out and tickle a Poppa seahorse right on his seahorse belly.

Everything is going swimmingly. We're drifti.ng along, when rather suddenly and dramatically the current shifts.  The boat is parked off in the distance, but it is quickly evident that there is no way we'll make it to the boat. Before we exhaust ourselves, we signal to them to come get us.

Our guide expressed some confusion over the current and the tides.  “Maybe it is just the beginning of high tide.”

“Do you mean low tide? “

“Yes. Low tide. But don’t worry, we have plenty of time.”  Yeah, I thought. 6 hours or so.  

We move over to another, more sheltered snorkeling spot and have a nice enjoyable swim while we wait for the manta rays.  We eat lunch, have a snooze.

I asked, when high tide was.

“Well, the other day , the mantas all came at 2 o'clock, so maybe we'll be lucky and they'll come then."

I asked, “Do Indonesians have tide charts?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, in the U.S., every coastal community has the time and height of the tides calculated, so people know the best time to take their boat out or the best time to fish.  Is there any thing like the here?”

“No, we don't really have anything like that.”

“How do the boaters know when the tides change?”

“I guess they just have an instinct, ya. They can look around and tell.”

Hmmm. So far we were off by 4 hours.  My own instincts can tell me a high tide will come twice in the next day.

But, 4 plus hours later we were back on the hunt and it wasn't looking too promising until the captain shouted... “Manta, Manta, Manta!”

And the chase was on. We headed the boat over that way and we all scrambled to get our gear on and we leaped into the water and this is what we saw.  

Great manta rays sweeping through at high tide gobbling up plankton and moving on.

And after swimming within touching distance, I guess it didn't really matter about the lack of tables or charts or the hours long wait.  They knew they were going to come, and they did show up as advertised.

Komodo Dragons are Assholes.

Komodo Dragons are assholes! I'll tell you why in a minute.

We headed to the Island of Flores for a long weekend. One of the main things to do is scuba and snorkel in the 30 or so islands in this giant nature preserve.  The other thing to do is see the Komodo Dragons.  

These are an Indonesian treasure and a UNESCO World Heritage site.  They live on the islands of Rinca and, of course, Komodo.  They must have been here for a very long time, for they look like dinosaurs.  

These 12 foot long lizards are born to be fighters.  

Here’s the basic start to their lives. A momma dragon digs her nest and lays her 15-30 eggs. Then she digs a bunch of decoy nests so predators get confused.  She also guards all these nests for the first three months, then she wanders off while the rainy season commences.  4 months later, as rainy season is ending, she comes back to her nesting site and waits. And when the babies hatch and crawl out of the ground, she eats them.  That's right.  She hangs around and gobbles down own her young.

So, the first thing that a baby Komodo must overcome is the snatching jaws of its own mother.  The strategy is to emerge from the nest with a sibling, preferably a slower and less enlightened sibling and while momma gobbles up bubba, you make a run for the nearest tree where you spend the next 3 or 4 years of your life feasting on insects and geckos until you’re 1 meter in length whereupon you descend from the trees and become a ground dweller.

But, eating your young is not really the jerky thing I'm talking about.

All that is left after a komodo feast!

These ancient lizards are total carnivores.  They can bring down a water buffalo and digest the entire beast except for its skull.  The will digest and reduce the entire animal including the large bones to a long, chalky turd.

We'd heard tell of a Swiss man being separated from his group and taken down and all that was left was his glasses.  

When you look at these things you wonder how they do it.  They don't run very fast. The can't run far.  How do they kill something like a buffalo or a pig or a human?

The secret is their bite. They don't have a venomous bite as once thought.  Rather, their mouth's harbors some 16 types of toxic bacteria including Listeria which Jeni's ice cream fans will recognize as the type of germ that shut down the factory.  I think Jeni should create a flavor called dragons breath, maybe with mango and tamarind in honor of their shut down.  But, that's another matter.

So, this lizard has this dirty, filthy bite. And, when still, it looks like a log.  So, it camouflages itself around a watering hole and waits and then it leaps out and bites its victim.  If can get a good solid strike it will kill the animal then, but it doesn't matter.  

If it survives the first bite, the victim now has an infected bite which often won't stop seeping.  It roams the countryside dripping fluids. The lizard just stalks it. Day by day. Hour by hour. Until the victim succumbs and the feast begins.

And this, is why a Komodo dragon is an asshole. Can anyone name an animal, other than humans, who kills in such a tortured way?