Whale Sharks, Corals & Dragons

Tour leaders meet you at Komodo Airport in Labuan Bajo and transfer you directly to the ship. After settling into your cabin, complete an equipment check and join an introductory snorkel from a calm beach to get comfortable in the water. Next, participate in a hands-on coral restoration project where you learn how small coral pieces grow into new colonies, attach your own fragments to a coral rack, and place it in the water. At dusk, anchor off a small mangrove island to watch thousands of giant fruit bats leave their roosts to feed on the mainland, pollinating flowers and spreading seeds across the islands.

Go ashore on Rinca Island to search for wild Komodo dragons, the world’s largest lizards, which grow up to three meters long and weigh about 70 kilograms. Learn from your guide how these top predators shape the island’s savanna ecosystem.

Go ashore on Sangeang, an active volcano rising straight from the sea. Here you see the Ring of Fire at work: fresh volcanic land, forest taking hold on its slopes, and a colorful coral reef growing just offshore, where you snorkel. You also visit the local village to see how people farm the rich volcanic soil.

Go ashore on forested Moyo Island and travel inland to a rainforest waterfall, where you can bathe in its cool pools. It is a chance to see how forest catches and holds the rain that feeds the island’s streams and, ultimately, the reefs.

Swim with whale sharks, the gentle giants of the sea, in Saleh Bay. These plankton-feeding sharks gather around the bagans, traditional floating fishing platforms whose lights draw in the small fish they eat. Learn how local fishers, the sharks and responsible visitors now share the bay, and how tourism gives fishing families a reason to protect them. Visit a Sumbawan village and watch the age-old tradition of buffalo racing, as local men drive their prized animals through a flooded rice padi. Spend a day at Satonda, a volcanic island with a salt-water crater lake at its heart. Walk to the lake’s edge and snorkel the reef outside, comparing two very different water worlds on one small island.

Visit a village where boatbuilding lies at the heart of the culture. Large wooden pinisi ships sit along the shore in various stages of construction, built by hand using the UNESCO-recognized art of pinisi boatbuilding. Meet the builders and learn how their knowledge of wind, wood and sea passes between generations. Spend a relaxing half day on an uninhabited island with its own pink beach. Swim, sunbathe, wakeboard and snorkel a rich coral reef, and learn where the pink comes from: fragments of tiny red corals mixed into the white sand.

Re-entering Komodo National Park, you drift snorkel some of the park’s healthiest reefs. Swim with sea turtles as they cruise the shallows, and with manta rays as they feed in the current and circle cleaning stations, where small wrasse remove parasites from their skin, showing one of the clearest examples of mutual benefit in nature.

Enjoy a drift snorkel at Gili Lawa Darat, in the north of the park, then hike to the viewpoint for sunset over the islands.

Snorkel the Hatamin Island coral restoration project and see what can be achieved when like-minded people come together to solve a problem. Swim among racks placed over the years and see how restored coral brings fish and life back to the reef. Your guide explains how corals live in partnership with the microscopic algae inside them, and why that partnership breaks down when seas warm.

Enjoy one of the famous SeaTrek beach barbecues under a sky full of stars, with local dishes prepared by the chef and live music from the crew.

After breakfast on the final day, take a scenic drive to Melo Village to see the Caci dance of the Manggarai people. In this ritual, two performers armed with a whip and a rattan shield take turns to strike and parry, dancing to traditional music.

On your return from Melo Village, the team will bring you to the airport for a farewell with your fellow shipmates and tour leaders, and to check in for your onward flight.