Fun in Flores: A Three-Day Boat Adventure

Victoria
Apr 14, 2023
5 min read

Updated: Oct 17, 2023

Planning a trip to Indonesia and want to have the most amazing time? Then you need to consider a boat trip through Komodo National Park!

Indonesia has become most famous for Bali, one of its larger islands. However, there is much more to the country and this tour will give you not just an experience of a lifetime, but many! If you're heading to Bali, check out this 4-day itinerary!

I think Padar Island is one of the few places that look as amazing as the photos online.

Have you heard of Komodo National Park?

Komodo National Park is an UNESCO world heritage site most known for the dragons it gets the name from, but there is much more to be offered. There are 29 beautiful islands that make up this park offering everything from hiking to snorkeling.

How to get to Komodo National Park?

Since this park is a UNESCO heritage site, it is protected and can only be visited on a tour. You cannot visit the island with Komodo Dragons without a tour – it is illegal to visit without a guide. There are many tours to choose from varying in length and destinations, don’t worry there is one for every budget!

There are tours that depart from Lombok which is closer to Bali. We chose to fly to Flores and take a tour from there. This is the most common way for travelers to take a tour and you will have a lot of options if you choose this way.

Indonesia is the largest archipelago in the world, it consists of five main islands and over 18,000 smaller ones with close to a third being uninhabited. Flores is one of the larger islands, part of the East Nusa Tenggara Regency, and the closest to Komodo National Park. If you choose to fly into here, you'll actually land at Komodo Airport.

In Flores, we stayed at World B&B and I would recommend it for travelers who need easy and convenient accommodation. They provided an airport shuttle (to and from), had a pool and a restaurant on site.

What tours are offered?

I would say there are 5 types of tours offered to explore Komodo National Park, I'll start with the one we chose;

Seven countries represented in one photo.

1. Classic Komodo Tour

The majority tours available will offer a 3-day/2-night all inclusive cruise on a 14-person boat. Our boat had 4 bedrooms with washrooms and a/c units. Our tour itself had 11 people on it (including our family) so it was not fully booked.

We chose this tour as we could have a private bedroom, ours was the only room without bunk beds, but still make friends to share the experience with.

The boats that offer this tour will vary as far as 'luxury' is concerned, ours was quite simple. There were rooms on the boat that had toilet and a/c troubles. That being said, we were not there for the quality of the boat. If you're after a luxury tour, perhaps for your honeymoon the keep reading.

Some boats have more of a theme to their decor.

2. Luxury Komodo Tour

If you are looking for a more luxurious tour, you will have plenty of options. We saw some beautiful boats while there, there were boats that had bathtubs on their private balconies!

The majority of the higher budget tours will be on a more traditional boat called a Phinisi. If you're not sure what that is, you can google it or just picture a stereotypical small pirate ship. We even saw some of these ships decorated as pirate ships, with skulls-and-crossbones or kraken. The sails are more for decoration to have the traditional aesthetic, while motors are used to navigate.

3. Backpacker's Komodo Tour

Backpacker's boats can be a little more 'party' style.

I think it’s fairly easy to guess why we did not partake in this type of cruise, but for the younger or tight budget travelers this would be a good fit. It is still an all-inclusive tour, although I’ve heard the standards for food and sleeping are much lower.

The tour stops themselves are all quite similar, you will see the same islands and snorkel in the same places. The big differences will be in food and sleeping arrangements. The backpacker’s tour will be more dorms or even mats in one large room, shared bathrooms and little privacy. I've also heard the food is not as satisfying.

4. Diving Komodo Tour

The diving tour is fairly straight forward to how it sounds. The boats themselves are similar to the Classic Komodo Tour except you have opportunities to dive instead of snorkel or swim.

This tour will have different stops than the other tours because you are diving, it will be less touristy since not everyone can partake. I do believe you need to already have your certification to go on this tour.

5. Private Komodo Tour

If you have a hearty budget or a large group, this would be a good option for you. This is a commonly chosen option for families traveling, since Kymani is so young and our only child we did not choose it.

There is a lot more flexibility in the schedule to fit your needs since there is no one else on the tour. If you want more say in what happens on your tour – chose this!

How to book a tour?

Once you know what type of cruise you would like to book comes the harder part. It’s not as simple as visiting a website, looking at photos, itineraries and menus and picking which one you’d like, entering your credit card and booking.

The most common way to book activities in South East Asia is in person. If you do not want to arrive in Flores, head to the docks and find a tour with availability then you can find someone to contact online. We were apprehensive of selecting a company online without knowing anything about it so we asked Facebook for advice. It was recommended to us to book with Kartika, we reached out on TripAdvisor and all conversations were in WhatsApp.

Prices will vary based on the tour you choose, the bedroom you choose and if it’s wet or dry season. Because we had a private room, ours was the most expensive on our boat.

Don’t forget to barter though! I’m sure you know you can haggle for a better price at a market buying your souvenirs, but you can also do it when booking a tour.

When to visit Komodo National Park?

Like the majority of South East Asia, Indonesia has two seasons. Here in Canada, we are used to four but they only have wet and dry. The wet season is considered the ‘off season’, as most travelers do not want to be exploring for days on end in the rain. The dry season is considered ‘peak season’ as it’s perfect for beach days.

Our trip happened to coincide with the wet season, it’s just how it lined up with our parental leave and missing the worst of winter in Canada. The benefits to traveling at this time is less people and lower rates.

The majority of people will recommend you visit in the dry season (April-October), however it depends on what you want. We were lucky and the rain on our cruise did not interfere with any of our activities. If you are unwilling to take that risk then you’ll want to go in the dry season.

What’s the itinerary?

The exact itinerary will depend on the tour you choose and the weather. This is what ours looked like;