Another adventure on the Lindblad Explorer round Indonesia, again paying 10% of normal fare using our BOAC discount. We had to get ourselves to Jakarta, and had an overnight at Singapore to catch our connection to Jakarta where we joined the Lindblad group on a charter flight to Ambon. Interestingly it was the first jet ever to land at Ambon, a notoriously dangerous airport, and on a Garuda aircraft, an airline with a somewhat tarnished safety record. Anyway we got to Ambon and set off on the Lindblad Explorer
 |
 |
 |
There were certainly a lot of traditional dances, and whilst it would be glib to say when you have seen one, you have seen them all - as the American tourist said of British Castles. For me the dances were not memorable, but many other things were
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
There were two "remember forever" visits - Agats and its headhunters, and the Komodo dragons.
Head hunting and cannibalism were practiced by the Ashgat until the 1960s. And American , Michael Rockefeller disappeared here in 1961 and was believed to have been a victim of cannibalism. We were told that we were the fist white people since WW2 to visit the area
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
After West Irian, it was back to the more normal Indonesian islands and their cultures
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Komodo
Our stop at Komodo certainly was memorable. We walked for hours across the island, then the guide beheaded a goat. Half the goat was hung from a tree, and a large dragon reached up and swallowed the half goat whole. The other bits of dead goat were tethered to a post, and other dragons devoured the meat .These creatures are big, powerful, and you would not want to meet them on a dark night
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
From Komodo it was a short hop to Bali and a flight back to London
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |