A journey in May 1973 from Jakarta/Flores to Papua New Guinea & Komodo
Website only constructed in 2017.
This wondrous experience was courtesy of my job at BOAC - we received a 90% discount as the ship was not full: we paid £200 each for just the cruise, airfares, also 10% standby, extra: this was still a fortune to us at the time but I was 4 months pregnant and there would be no more exciting holidays for a while!
From Jakarta, we think we flew to Flores where we boarded the ship. Then east through the islands to the headhunter country of Papua New Guinea. then back eastwards to East Timor, Komodo and Bali . The Expedition Leader was Lyall Watson and the ship's doctor was Peter Bundred. The ship could take 90 passengers but there were only about 22 full fare passengers aboard: as far as we knew we were the only ´cheapos´aboard and we were spoilt by some of the other passengers, who bought us drinks and even gave us Lindblad cufflinks and Komodo Dragon earrings!.
Many years later this ship sank in Antartica , on 23-11-2007.
Click on photos/maps to enlarge
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We purchased 5 statues and shields ( shown above), including the one above, and flew home with these as hand luggage!!. They adorned the walls of Woking, Sheen, Springwells, Kirkby Fleetham, Chadlington & Corisande. In 2012, having downsized to Spain, we decided to send 4 of these for auction and just to keep the smallest: unfortunately the removers removed all 5 of them to auction.
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Then on to Komodo, and its fearsome dragons, that have caused several deaths.
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And finally to Bali
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On the way home. I am pretty certain that we stopped off in Ceylon/Sri Lamka, stayed at a fairly empty hotel, the Mount Lavinia, on the coast south of Colombo. Then we hired a car and drove to Kandy, visiting the Tiger's Tooth Temple seeing tea plantations