As we all know Komodo dragons are the largest living varanid. Although they live on the island that bears their name they also inhabit a few other islands that are relatively close by--Rinca, Padar, Flores, Gili Motang.

This trip took me to some beautiful parts of the world I hadn't previously seen. My trip started from my home city of Toronto to Vancouver, to South Korea, to Taipei, to Singapore, to Bali, to Flores, and finally to Komodo and Gili Motang.

I'll narrate each section by adding some context around the pictures to give you a feel for what was happening and where I was.

Apart from the natural beauty of the country the highlight of this leg of the trip was a behind the scenes tour of the impressive Singapore Zoo. This zoo is unlike any I have seen before. The animals are housed in spacious, natural exhibits that are so brilliantly designed that barriers between the animals and the visitors are seem not to exist unless you make it a point to look for them. The zoo was home to home to a number of water monitors that lived communily with a group of otters. Like almost all zoos and nature parks in the region they also housed a pair of Komodo dragons.

During our tour, our guide showed us a large cobra that was caught by hand and brought into the zoo by one of the keepers. How, you ask? Well as it happens the cobra was eating a Bengal monitor at the time and could not do much to defend itself.

Flores is also the home of the main ranger station for Komodo National Park. We visited during some down time and had a great time chatting and playing ping pong with some of the rangers.

We were also able to find water monitors on Flores although they were very wary and allowed only fleeting glances before they would submerge themselves.

Flores was our re-stocking point. This is the island we would sail to once our water and food supplies ran low. After a brief rest we would push off to the stuy site once again. Compared to camping on the islands with the dragons it was a welcome site even though the accomodations were basic. We enjoyed this time to relax, have some laughs and eat some great Indonesian cuisine.

The routine on each island was the same. Unload the boat, set up your camp, and then start setting your traps. Setting traps was a tough job by any measure. Each trap was broken into three pieces. Each person would tie one piece of the trap to their back pack frame and set out into the forest in groups of three or four to assmeble the traps at pre-determined locales using GPS navigation. There were numerous traps and each one took a number of hours to set. The terrain on Gili Motang is rocky and mountainous so the going was never easy. Add a 45 Lb trap to your back and a few hours of hiking and you start to get the picture.

Once all your traps are set you begin the research project of checking them for dragons twice a day. If a dragon is found in the trap it would be removed...carefully...measured, weighed, marked, a blood sample taken, and then released. The dragons on Gili Motang tend to be smaller than on Komodo. It's thought to be a result of fewer prey items.

We encountered a number of megapode bird nests. These mounds are huge and impossible to believe they were made by such a small bird. Dragons sometimes raid these nests for eggs.

At the end of a long day a dip in the sea to bath, a meal, some card playing with the rangers to unwind and then call it a night. Wake up the next day and do it all over again.

We rolled up our pants and started carrying everything from the boat to our base camp. This job took a lot longer than it sounds because in addition to the mangrove roots we had to do this in waist deep mud.

Once this task was done we settled into the routine of unloading the boat, setting up camp, and then start setting traps.

The terrain on Komodo is much different than Gili Motang. The island is mountainous like the others but not as rocky and luckily the trap sites were deep in the forest but mostly on flat ground.

It was clear from the start that prey items on Komodo were much more abundant than on the other islands. Walking through the forests it was common to encounter deer, pigs, fowl, and sometimes buffalo. Buffalo are an impressive animal to see up close because they thunder through the forest and flatten everything in their path.

The dragons we caught on Komodo were much larger on Gili Motang.

Luckily for us it was the dry season and mosquitos and other biting insects were almost nonexistant. However, if you wanted to take a bath on Komodo there was a little trickle of water about 400 metres from our camp that you could use. I went there once. Afer chasing away the pigs and deer it took me about 10 minutes to gather enough water to have a decent bath. By this time it was dark and the sand flies were out. Sand fly bites are annoying and itchy. That was the last time I did that.

Bali has to be one of my favorite places in the world. The people are friendy, the food is good, and the reptiles are all around...if you know where to look.

We spent a few days in Bali where we visited a bird and reptile park. The bird park was fantastic and the the reptile park was right next door and equally breath taking. There were a number of monitors there to fill my varanid appetite as well as a lot of other cold bloods to fill in the gaps.