Am far behind in my posts! We left Darwin on February 19th, and it is now March 2nd! There’s so much to see and do that the days pass quickly. I’ve made good progress on my Hawaiian appliqué project, so at least I have that to show for my time. Today is a sea day as we travel from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur, a good chance to catch up…starting with Komodo (ko-MO-do) Dragons!
The largest lizard on earth, and sharing common ancestors with dinosaurs, Komodo Dragons can grow to 10 feet long and weigh 300 pounds. They are aggressive and fearless predators with 60 razor-sharp teeth and a venomous saliva that can paralyze their prey, which includes water buffaloes! They are mostly found on three Indonesian islands, and we visited one of them, Rinca.
Their largest population is found on nearby Komodo Island, but its neighbor Rinca was chosen as a more suitable destination for cruise ships and research teams, as encroachment there can be more carefully controlled. Elevated walkways make for safer sightings even if the presence of humans has driven most of the lizard population to less accessible parts of the island. What we lost in the number of sightings, we gained in the excellent visitors’ center at the end of the walkway. There, we saw skeletons of both a male and female lizard and also learned about ongoing research and conservation efforts taking place on Rinca.
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