Komodo Island, can we get our own excursion?

Hi, there is only 1 pier for you to tender to at Komodo national park. We was there last month. You cannot go into the park with a guide. The price just to go the park is 65 US dollars , there's no cheaper rate at all.

When you get off the tender ere is a bit of a market before the park selling carved dragons and other stuff, never buy anything till you've on the way back to the ship cos they wanted 10$ early in the day but it cos me 2$ on the way back.

My recommendation would to book Hendricks tour at 95$ and you get the tour of the dragons and then we went by boat to pink beach for swimming and snorkling and that was amazing. You also get lunch included on the boat when you get to pink beach. Fantastic day

I meant to write that you cannot go in the park without a guide and a guard, plus one of our groups got chased by a dragon.

Labuan Bajo is the closest Island / town to Komodo Island and where the airport is located, and where those flying in arrive. It is a 4 hour boat ride each way to get to Komodo Island or 2 hours each way by fast boat.

 

If you are arriving by ship you need a guide who will meet you on Komodo Island!

i asked HAL where they arrive, and our guide will be waiting for us there.Told me can not get lost, hope so!:cool:

Komodo is one of the stop in our cruise on Millennium on Celebrity. We arranged a tour with Hendrick from Gotokomodo tour. I went to get in line for the tender tickets at 5:30am and got the earliest tickets for our group of 44 people. Our ship docked at 6:30am and we were on the island by 7am. Hendrick and his staff were their waiting and started our walk in the national park shortly afterwards. The weather was not very hot yet, and there is lots of shade from trees with singing birds everywhere. The best was the dragons were moving around and we saw many in our short trail. One dragon that we were following turned around and came towards us. 7 guides and rangers with their forks were immediately there and lured the beast away with a leg of goat on a string. What fun! Then we went to Pink Beach with lots of fishes and coral. We didn't need to spread fish food to attract the fishes for they were schools and schools of them. The beach was beautiful but in spite of the suntan lotion I got mildly sunburnt. There's a nice lunch on the boat before we returned. Unfortunately we had to end the half day for the ship set sail at 3pm.

What a lovely day! Do go there for an experience of a lifetime but be sure to get there early.

Celebrity told us that we can go to the island for $40 park admission but have to stay on the beach and cannot go on a trail without a ranger. From other cruisers we found some landed on the island and booked a sail to the beach right at the pier. Hendrick was easy to talk to for I called him a day ahead and added 10 more people to our group at the last minute.

We are going in 2 weeks and I will tell you how we got on. We pay for 4 days trip each 135$. Which is a good Price, thinking the cruiseline charge 95 for 1 trip.

Just back from my cruise We had a great day inKomodo, with the agency

gotokomodo.com, which was a tour round where the dragons are, after a trip to pink beach for snorkeling with a lovely lunch on the ship.

We paid 100$, but if you are about 8 people like us, the Price was 85$

would you mind letting me know the cost of the tour as we would like to do same early August from the Dawn Princess - their tour costs are outrageous. Sue

Hi

Did the $95 include the $65 entrance fee ?

How long does it take each way from where the ship tenders ?

Sue

Hi, Tiger, & welcome to Cruise Critic,

 

I suggest you post this on the RollCall for your cruise.

There's 45 pages of posts there from folk on your cruise, and they're the ones you need to target.

A lot of the thread is idle chit-chat, but there's also lots of posts about tour-sharing and good info about your ports.

 

Here's a link to your RollCall

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1957263&page=45

 

JB :)

I was on the Azamara Quest Feb 2015. Had a wonderful time. Komodo Island was one of my husband's "bucket list" activities and the trip off the Azamara was just great. The situation is that the Captain anchors off the dock just a little. The dock is akin to the ones that you would see at a summer beach house -- not long enough to dock even the R sized ships. The tenders go down and you have maybe a 3 minute ride to the dock. The dragons are down a little path and it is not a bad walk. The guides are hired by the government to protect the dragons not the people. Frankly not a lot to see and too many people seeing them. The guides talk a lot about nothing to let each group clear the dragons. Really not that safe because people were really getting in the dragon's space -- lying down to take selfies with really LARGE KDragons. You were protected by teens in flip flops with a stick!:eek: Check out Pink Beach also -- according to some information on the web the dragons which roam free can swim better than humans. Just expect a totally poor population -- that has gotten used to selling poorly made little souveniers by shouting at you or having small kids push on your leg to sell you a trinket the children sent out to beg. Captain got upset in that children on inner tubes and Styrofoam packing crates were paddling in and around the tenders and passengers were throwing food down to the kids getting more kids. My advice take the ship excursion. The tenders are necessary to get to dock anyway. To see the dragons you must go with a certified Ranger led group (part of excursion fee is for rangers and another part is to drop folks off at the dock -- government controlled facilities) If any folks did it with non-ship excursions they got in the same ranger lines with the ship's excursion so no benefit. I would not eat on the island. Very little refridgeration/food/sanitation/civilization and most of the guides go to other islands for living. Hope this helps. It was interesting but the advice I read that proved most true -- go see the dragons. Get next tender back and enjoy a cool beverage from the clean/AC cooled ship and thank Heavens you don't have to live on that rock.

I have been reading everyone's posts and am curious about a few things.

First of all I went to the website gotokomodo.com and couldn't find the information on a day trip for komodo island while taking a cruise.

I saw that people have posted about going with the cruise line for $100 including pink beach. Did this include the park entrance fee as well?

Also I went to their Facebook page but nothing has been updated since 2014, is this company still around? I did look for a link on their webpage to contact them, but couldn't find anything.

We are interested in booking the trip for 3 adults and 1 child. Any information would be helpful. Thank you!

We were in Komodo earlier this year and did a tour with Top Komodo Tour for $105 each. I didn't organize the tour so I cannot remember how many were on it.

My notes: We tendered so we had a bit of a wait - make sure the guide understands you don't have control over when you get a tender. A national park guide met us at the dock and took us on a 1.5hr slow trek through the jungle. The path was well marked and level with small gravel so it was easy. But, it was so hot and humid we sweated until our clothes were soaked. A few older people that day came close to fainting from the extreme heat. It was sprinkling rain when we started so that made it feel better, but once it stopped, it was very hot and humid. Saw a Komodo dragon as soon as we started the walk behind a building - he was large. Then saw a smaller one walking toward the first one we saw. Saw many trees, huge palms. In one open area they had rounded up 6 dragons of various sizes and we saw them walking, sitting up. It was truly awesome. Then our group took a boat ride to a local village that was on stilts. Then took the boat to a pink sand beach (well, there was a little pink in the sand) and swam. Some people snorkeled, but it was very cold water - apparently the water changes depending upon the ocean currents and which cove you swim in.

The park entrance fee was included in the tour cost. It was a wonderful day and I would do it again.

Komodo: With Princess independent passengers have to register that they have a non-Princess excursion with guide booked and that one will not be let off the pier unless a guide is waiting, rubbish, you do not even have to book a tour, get off the tender and you may even see a Komodo dragon on the beach for free. Or hire a guide with stick there.

Or book with KOMODO MAS TOUR (gatawula.peynet@gmail.com) and get a private guide with stick to ward off the dragons. Warning: This operator wants to be paid before via PayPal and you may not be able to get there via tender due to high waves! Good idea to negotiate payment at end of tour for each port.

Wrinklies may not like the 1,000m walk to the watering hole, where the dragons are fed to stay there for the photos and not to snap at the tourists. You may even see one on the beach, no bathing! Some guides even take you on a 4,000m walk up a hill, so it pays to say something like "Orang cacat", pronounced "tshashat" or "handicapped" person if the guide's English isn't the best, but they all learned English from watching ABC TV International.

The new concrete pier is also very long (1,500m ?), so if you are not to well on your feet like my wife just get off the shorter wooden pier, look at the souvenir shops, wild deer, pigs and dragon at the beach and get back onto the tender at the shorter wooden jetty.

Wrinklies may not like the 1,000m walk to the watering hole, where the dragons are fed to stay there for the photos and not to snap at the tourists. You may even see one on the beach, no bathing! Some guides even take you on a 4,000m walk up a hill, so it pays to say something like "Orang cacat", pronounced "tshashat" or "handicapped" person if the guide's English isn't the best, but they all learned English from watching ABC TV International.

The new concrete pier is also very long (1,500m ?), so if you are not to well on your feet like my wife just get off the shorter wooden pier, look at the souvenir shops, wild deer, pigs and dragon at the beach and get back onto the tender at the shorter wooden jetty.

Some good advice here, but.....what are wrinklies?

Wrinklies: Seniors like myself! Freo to Freo meant this Princess cruise is full of sandgropers with wheelchairs, walkers and walking sticks as it did not require a flight to Sydney or Brisbane to join a cruise.

As it is very hot and humid there, on the way to the watering hole I saw a stretcher and an attendant with walkie talkie to take care of seniors who fainted, so that can happen.