Can you imagine traveling around the world to see a Komodo Dragon and then zipping out, not seeing a single lizard? That was fortunately my unfounded fear. If we saw one, we saw a dozen.

We didn’t see Komodo Dragons on Komodo Island, though. Instead, we went by ship’s tender to Rinca Island, home of the Komodo National Park and some 1,400 Komodo Dragons.The tour lasted about 2 hours and involved a walk of maybe a half mile on an elevated boardwalk. The walkway served to protect our shoes from the mud and to protect the rest of us from the animal eating dragons. These critters eat everything from their babies up to animals as big as deer and even water buffalos. A monkey or two would do for the young or a really hungry adult. We saw all these food items on our walk, missing only the wild boars (pigs) that some of our shipmates saw on their tour earlier in the day.

According to wikipedia,

            “Attacks on humans are rare, but Komodo dragons have been responsible for several human fatalities, in both the wild and in captivity. According to data from Komodo National Park spanning a 38-year period between 1974 and 2012, there were 24 reported attacks on humans, fine of them fatal.”

Also, according to the park,

            “Compared to crocodilians and other reptiles, Komodo dragons have relatively weak bite strength. Instead, they rely on their sharp, curved teeth and long, sturdy claws to slash and tear at their prey with astonishing force.”

Not very nice table manners, but sometimes I get that urge when I dig into a thick, juicy steak.

As a frame of reference, Florida has about 8 alligator attacks each year that require medical attention. Fatal alligator bites are rare. From 1948 to 2021 Florida reported 442 unprovoked bite incidents from alligators, 26 of which resulted in fatalities, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

The rest of the day was spent on the usual “day at sea” activities. You know, late breakfast, early lunch, teatime at 4 PM with tea and crumpets, Lecture on East Timor at 4:30, discussion forum on Indonesia at 5:15, astronomy lecture at 6:30, dinner at 7:30 and a musical performance at 9:15 PM. The singer was a former Viking Cruise Director (the guy with the big smile that’s supposed to keep us smiling) who now has a family with three kids who keep him closer to home these days.

Judy and I also found a tabletop backgammon game with which we’ve been relearning the rules. Unfortunately the game is flawed – probably needs a software update. Judy has beat me four straight, a statistically improbable outcome. I’m opening a trouble ticket.

You’d think with all that free time I’d be getting my blog posting for the day done early. But no, here I sit on our balcony at noon the next day (Wednesday), typing away while 67 dragon pictures upload. The upload over Starlink, shared by 1,000 passengers, is slow, about 1 mbps. I haven’t taken a single picture yet today and with our heavy calendar I probably won’t do another posting until Thursday from Darwin, Australia.

Speaking of time, it’s getting really weird. Up until now, we’ve been 13 hours ahead of EST, 12 hours ahead of the British Virgin Islands, where Jeff and Rebecca are. So, 8 AM Monday here was 7 PM Sunday in Boston. Now we’ve switched over to Darwin time, which meant that we set our clocks ahead one and one-half hours last night. We now either subtract 14.5 hours to get EST or we can add 9.5 hours and call it yesterday. I’m not sure why Darwin insists on the half-hour thing. I suspect it reflects some communal pigheadedness on the part of Darwin Aussies.