June 2nd, 2016

Day 63: Labuan Bajo

Since we were right across the street from the airport, we didn’t have get up too early for our flight to the island of Flores. We hopped on a small propeller plane (cue Indiana Jones music!) to Labuan Bajo – the jumping off point for Komodo Island.

Short flight to Labuan Bajo

The rest of the day was open for us to relax at the Sylvia Resort in Waicicu Beach, about 15min outside of town. Labuan Bajo proper doesn’t have a very swimmable beach, so it was nice to hang out at the resort for a few hours. We swam and kayaked and had a jolly time.

The beach at the Sylvia Waicicu Resort

We had the beach practically to ourselves – we only saw 4 other guests the entire day

Free kayaks were available, so we paddled around the small islands off the beach

Shuttle boats & a police boat “parked” on a beach? Returning to the Sylvia with a bag full of trash we picked up from the water. Probably futile as we noticed all the trash collected off the beach just goes into a pile behind a building on the property. Next storm will likely blow it all right back in the water.

When we checked our watches, we realized it was only 2PM – we did pretty much everything you could do at the Sylvia, and now were bored. The resort had internet, but only in the non-air conditioned lobby, so catching up on the blog/emails wasn’t really an option. The room had HBO in English (with Indonesia subtitles, of course), so we ended up vegging out in front of the TV until dinnertime.

Dinner sunset at the Sylvia Waicicu Resort

Now that we have started to veer off the “easy” places, a lot of our itinerary has buffer days & travel days built into it to account for bad weather & delays. So we’re starting to get used to the uneven pace of bursts of lots of activity, followed by uneventful days. Life of the traveler – don’t pity us too much.