Labuan Bajo 4

While looking around the port city; we stumbled upon Steven Fabes,  a doctor from London who is biking around the world. He is in his 4th year of biking, and hopes to complete his journey in 2016. We met him in Santiago, Chile, two years ago, and have been reading his blog "Cycling The 6" ever  since. We met for supper at the local sunset bar, and watched a great sunset as we ate supper. We found out they had booked a tour to see the Komodo dragons so we signed up for the tour.  We had recommendations from our friends at Lena I which coincided with the recommendations  of  Steve and Claire.  Our next adventure was about to start.  

We left early and caught one of the two boats reserved for the tour.  There was a total seven people for the tour not counting the crew of three for each boat. Each boat had a medium size motor with a direct drive to the propeller. This then required the  crew to throttle the motor up and down as need be as there was no direct control of the motor speed  at the steering wheel.  When closing in on the shore, there was a signal from the captain of the boat to one of the other crew members to throttle down the motor to slow the boat. At a certain point, the captain would then send the second crew member to drop the anchor to which a long rope was attached. The motor was shut off,  and we would glide into port using the anchor to slow us down.  They would then tie up to the dock.  The anchor rope would be tied to the boat keeping the boat spaced so there would not be any damage to the boat or other boats.   For now, this type of operation works because there is a lot of labour, the labour costs are low, and more modern boats are too expensive for these people to buy. Some day, this type of operation will not be economical..