Labuan Bajo
- chloegbridges
- Feb 19
- 8 min read
January 1
The flights to Labuan Bajo are a little complicated because there is no direct Lombok to Labuan Bajo. We ended up having to fly from Lombok to Bali on one airline, get our bags and re-go through security with a different airline for our flight Bali to Labuan Bajo. Lombok and Labuan Bajo are both smaller, less popular islands so they don’t have direct flights. Even with all that, the travel day was actually very smooth. We found out once we got to the hotel that there are no official taxi or car services in the area and instead you have to use a private taxi service. Honestly, this was probably something I should have looked into before we went. It was a little annoying because one way to anywhere was 100,000 rupiah. This is definitely more expensive than transportation on other islands. Additionally, our hotel was not walking distance from any restaurants or places. If I were to go there again, I would try to stay in the downtown area near the harbor so I could be walking distance from a lot of places.
January 2
This was the day we did the tour of Komodo Island. The tour was most of the day and had 6 stops. We started out at the harbor in Labuan Bajo. Luckily the tour provided pick up and drop off from our hotel so we didn’t have to figure out transportation there and back. It was a little confusing at the beginning because the shuttle dropped us off at a shop with a lot of other people and it was a little chaotic to check in and make sure we were in the correct group. There were multiple tours leaving at the same time. The most consistent and difficult part of the tour was the boarding and debarking of the boat. We started by having to climb down to another boat and crawl through that boat to get to our boat. There was consistently very difficult and somewhat dangerous ways of getting on and off the boat.
Padar Island
Padar Island was the first stop. There was an optional hike to the top of the mountain but we ended up just going walking on the beach. The beach was beautiful and there were so many deer around the beach.
Pink Beach
The next stop was Pink Beach. Actually it is technically part of Padar Island as well but on the other side so we went back onto the boat to drive around to it. I think some people might be disappointed with pink beaches because on social media they are often edited to look like they are an almost unnatural shade of pink. In reality, the pink beaches are just a very light pink coming from a specific type of coral that is naturally red. The beach was absolutely beautiful and the water was so clear. It was the same island so we saw more of the deer from the previous stop. The water was so clear we could see down to the bottom at most places we were during the tour.
Komodo National Park
The Komodo Island was our longest stop as we had a guided tour around a part of the island. You can only visit the island and can’t actually stay on it but there are a couple small villages of people who live there. Many of them work as nature guides at the park. Technically you can walk around the park by yourself but it is much safer and easier to have one of the guides. Unfortunately that is how people get lost in the park is if they don’t have a guide and don’t know where they are going. We went on the shortest path which was about a mile circle, but they also have ones that are 5, 10, 15 miles and people often think they can do those alone but it’s very unsafe. People only have about 5 hours if they are bitten by Komodo dragons so if they are without a guide it can be very dangerous if they are bitten and lost because it’s about an hour boat ride to the nearest hospital.
Luckily the tour provided a local guide but if you are going by yourself they will often pressure you to tip in addition to the fee for the guide. That’s definitely a personal preference. So we were told at the beginning that there is no guaranty that we will see any Komodo Dragons. However, before we even started walking we saw a small one walking towards the water. This was cool to see. We continued on the walk and saw some wild pigs and some more deer like we saw on Padar Island. About half way through the walk we saw another tour group standing around and saw that there was a massive Komodo Dragon just laying and resting. It was resting near a water hole where it will wait until prey come to drink and then attack. Other than hunting and mating, they are not a very active animal so they only need one substantial meal a month.
People took turns have photos with the Komodo Dragon and again the guides can in handy because they drew a line on the ground and made it clear not to go past the line. There was a couple in our tour that kept trying to go past the line and I swore they were going to get bitten at one point. The man was dressed like a wanna-be Indiana Jones so I’m sure he thought he could handle it. I’m only glad they didn’t get bit because that would have cut the tour short.
After the walking tour, we went back to the boat to have lunch before going on to our next stop.
Taka Makasar (Sand Bar)This was our first snorkeling spot. It was a beautiful sand bar in the middle of a handful of islands. The sand bar was no more than 5 yards wide when we were there but it stretched out for a while. Although the sand bar was nice, the main reason we were there was to snorkel. About a 3-5 minute swim away from the sand bar was this wonderful, vibrant coral. There were so many colorful different corals and sea-life. The only downside with the area was that you had to be careful of your surroundings or you could be accidentally taken out by a boat.
Manta Point
This was the highlight of the trip.
Now let me take it back and explain how they told us this stop would work. We were told to keep all our snorkel gear on because it would be a quick event when we got there. They told us manta rays swim against the current so we would be jumping in ahead of them and they would swim past us. They made it sound like we needed to jump out as soon as the boat stopped and that the whole process would take less then. 5 minutes.
The reality was a bit different. We were still kind of rushed to get into the water but when we did, we had to swim a bit to get into the right position. Some of the manta rays were kind of hard to see because they were so deep and kind of blended in. However, this was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life. The manta rays swam all around and were absolutely beautiful. At one point, 2 of them came close enough to my mom and I that you could reach out and touch them. My mom hide behind me because she didn’t want to get poked by their stinger. It was wonderful, the rays were so graceful, just gliding through the water. This was the first time I had seen manta rays in the wild and it was amazing.
Turtle Point
The last stop of the tour was to an area known for having a bunch of turtles. By this time, the flippers were starting to hurt my feet a bit so I decided to do this stop without them…that was a mistake. I was one of the first few people in the water after the guide and he kept leading me further and further from the boat. Normally this would be fine, but the guide had flippers on and I had none. This resulted in me having to swim hard end to keep with with someone with flippers without having any flippers of my own to help. I was honestly very tired after swimming full speed for about 10-15 minutes but when we finally stopped it was all worth it because there was a beautiful turtle below that was swimming around. I followed that turtle for a while when the guide told me to follow him because he saw another turtle. When we got to that turtle he wanted to move along because he saw another good area with a turtle. However, out of the corner of my eye I saw a manta ray. For a second I was debating whether to follow the guide or the ray. I decided to follow the ray and started swimming after it. The ray was hanging out around so I lifted my head to see if I could find my mom and others to show the ray to. I managed to flag down my mom and a couple we had been talking to for a while. My mom, in turn, flagged down another mom on the tour that hadn’t been able to see the rays at the previous spot. She was able to get there a see the ray for a while which made her very happy. After manta ray point, this was my second favorite spot on the tour.
We got back on the boat after a bit, and had some coffee and snacks on the ride back. My mom and I sat at the back of the boat because we were pretty wet and didn’t want to get our stuff too wet. This tour was overall very nice and a great time. If anyone is ever in Labuan Bajo, I suggest doing a tour like this so you can see a bunch of cool places.
We headed back to the hotel and later in the day took a private taxi to downtown to grab dinner. It was a great dinner and the downtown was fun so we were planning to go again to look around when we weren’t so tired.
January 3
Our last full day in Labuan Bajo was free day. We were pretty tired from the previous day so we slept in a bit. We grabbed breakfast at the hotel and got some spots facing the ocean near the pool. We enjoyed a nice day at the pool and ocean. In the late afternoon we decided to go to the downtown area so we could walk around and also find a place for dinner. The downtown had a really nice walking area that went along the water. We went into some of the boutiques and my mom found a cute bracelet. We ended up at a nice little Italian place and had some great food. We walked around a while more after that and came across a nice ice cream spot where we had a bit of ice cream before heading back to the hotel.
January 4
Luckily we didn’t have a super early start to the day so we could have a relaxed breakfast at the hotel. Our hotel had a shuttle that took us to the airport so we didn’t have to worry about transportation. We had a direct flight from Labuan Bajo to Jakarta where we were spending 2 nights before my parents flight back to the US. We were able to have brunch one of the days with another PCV and her mom who actually lives in Jakarta.
This was an amazing trip and I am so glad my parents were able to see Indonesia while I was here.
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