Today’s destination is Pink Beach, which requires 24 hours of sailing time from Kalabahi. A crew member has been taken ill during the night, and L’Austral has to divert course to allow them to be transferred to the nearest hospital in Labuan Bajo, a bustling tourist centre on Flores Island. This appears to be a far more developed area than we have visited so far, and is peppered with small fishing villages and multi-storey resorts. Captain Marchesseau wastes no time at Labuan Bajo, despatching a zodiac with the ill crew member, with the ship’s doctor and nurse as escorts, and it’s up to the zodiac to catch back up to the ship as it promptly turns around and resumes its course to Pink Beach.
This delays our arrival at Pink Beach by two hours.
Pink Beach is named after the colour of the coral, and is in a much more populated area of Indonesia than we have travelled to so far. The downside of our later than planned arrival is that my group doesn’t leave the ship until 4pm, and low tide is at 5.30pm. The snorkelling area is quite small and has lots of people in the water, but after 15 minutes or so they all head back to the beach, leaving a small number of snorkelers in the water with an interesting array of fish.
After an hour snorkelling, the water depth is down to about 0.6m, making navigating through the coral back to the beach tricky. Captain Marchesseau arrives on the beach as the passengers are queuing to return to L’Austral, dons fins and a mask and swims out to check out the coral.
Sunset is again spectacular, setting over the mountains across the bay from Pink Beach.
L’Austral repositions a short distance at about 10.30pm to be closer to Loh Liang, the entry to Komodo National Park. Tomorrow morning is an early start to look for Komodo dragons!
