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Komodo National Park is the only place on earth where you can still visit the prehistoric Komodo dragon, a huge lizard of up to 4 meter long.

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Komodo National Park is a small 390 square kilometer large island between Sumbawa and Flores, East Nusa Tenggara province, formed in 1980 and declared a World Heritage Site in 1986. It actually also includes the islands Rinca, Padar and numerous smaller islands. There is a small fishing village, a mixture between former convicts that have mixed with the Bugis from Sulawesi. They maintain, control and feed the Komodo Dragons with their stock of goats and deer. Wild buffaloes and deer can be seen on this hilly and mostly barren island.

The island Komodo is famous because of the Komodo Dragon, a huge 2-4 meter large lizard living on earth for over half a million years. It is considered to be one of the last and oldest ancient creatures living in the modern world. There are many guided tours to visit their resting places in the dry river beds or being eye to eye when these ancient creatures are attracted with bait. Although accidents almost never happen, the lizards are not tame and care should be taken. Another well known inhabitant is the flightless megapode bird.

Besides a simple guesthouse, there is no accommodation in Komodo, and most tourist dive here by liveaboard starting at Labuhan Bajo, Flores. You can sunbath at some of the best empty beaches that only liveaboard tourist will visit. There are tours that provide cocktail drinks, water skiing equipment, kayaks, fishing, and planned hikes, all in one of Indonesia's quietest regions. Its underwater habitat should not be forgotten as it is one of the most astonishing places in the world. Shallow reefs, stunning steep seamounts, cliff walls, channels, fast flowing currents all crowded with fish and surrounded in the best colors you have ever seen. The north has warmer, clearer waters than the south, but between twenty and thirty degrees nobody can really complain. A term named oceanic upwelling provides for extreme plankton rich waters which attracts all sorts of marine life.



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