We sailed overnight to Komodo National Park to go see the famous Komodo dragons. It’s exciting to be able to sail to see a creature that is endemic to just a few small islands in Indonesia. While seeing one particular animal might not be that big a deal in the grand scheme of things, it is the sort of experience that sailing to a destination really makes feel special.

The anchorage here, similar to what we’d find over and over in the coming days, was deep water right up until the last moment when a wall of coral would head straight up to the surface. Anchoring would prove to be difficult in most of Indonesia.

Friends had boats of trinket sellers attaching themselves before they had even gotten anchored. I happened to be flying the drone at the time and called them on the VHF to let them know they were less than a boat length from running up on the coral. They pulled away with the boats still dangling off the side.

Very early the next morning we were at the dock in the small village to meet our National Park tour guide.

The guide led us up a well trod path just above the village where we immediately found Komodos basking in the sun both directly on the path and alongside it. I’m not a big tour taker to begin with, and I could feel my eyes rolling up into the back of my head. “Oh boy, this is going to be quite the nature tour.” The dragons are impressive, though.

Our guide’s skill at taking family photos with the dragons also had me wondering just how natural this experience was.

We wandered along the path for a bit longer, spotting some more dragons along the way, and learning a little bit about them and about the community here. It was all harmless enough, I suppose.

Then as we were watching one dragon move through the trees, our guide and his assistant suddenly became serious. “Go! Go, quickly. This way. Quickly.” Another dragon was moving our way from another direction and the guides knew this was not going to be a friendly encounter. We did not want to be in the middle of it.

Of course, when the dragon chased us directly into the souvenir stall, I grew a little suspicious. “Are these guys really that good at this? Surely, they haven’t trained the Komodo dragons to chase tourists.”

At least our guide’s assistant had a sturdy weapon to protect us.

The dragon veered off and for a moment we thought his job was done.

But then things got serious. The two males came together and the battle ensued. And it was pretty clear at this point that the guide had had good reason for getting us out from between the two of them. They are about 8′ long and close to 200 pounds, and those claws are wicked.

They faced off like this a few times before one of them finally gave in and wandered off, defeated. Despite the nasty scratching, which sounded as bad as it looked, no blood appeared to have been drawn.

After the fight we walked back through town where the kids smiled shyly, and the adults just went about their day.

The tour was a nice morning out, thanks in large part to a fight over a girl.