The itinerary for this trip was remarkable – saw oragutans and Komodo dragons in the wild, snorkeled, and enjoyed touring around Bali and the various islands. Did the Gili Trawangan extension and went scuba diving there. And Elly was a wonderful tour guide. However, there were some downsides, including the boat in the Komodo islands and some of the other transportation. The boat itself was not very comfortable, and actually a little dangerous in certain regards. The boat was not set up to accommodate the number of people on the tour, so was at times crowded and uncomfortable in the common area. There wasn’t just an option to sleep on the deck, but a requirement for a few people, as there were not enough cabins to accommodate the entire group. And when those deck sleepers needed to use a restroom in the middle of the night, they had to barge in to one of the cabins in the dark – no restrooms on the boat except inside the few cabins. The dining table where they served all the food buffet-style was crammed in a small room, with the stairs leading down to a couple of the cabins right alongside of the table -as you were getting your food, it would have been extremely easy to fall down them if you weren’t very careful. The refrigerator with all of our drinks was very often blocked by people sitting at the table, so there was major shuffling to do you when you wanted to get a drink. There was a low railing around the boat, which in rough seas would have been very easy to fall overboard.
there was only one support skiff with the boat that could only take half of us ashore at a time, so getting everyone onshore took forever. The local guide that accompanied us on the Komodo boat trip was not very good. He didn’t do any kind of assessment of everyone’s snorkeling abilities but instead took off on the first snorkel in a strong current, and didn’t look back to see if everyone was following, or try to keep the group together. People fell way behind and because there was only one skiff, that skiff couldn’t (nor ever intended to, it seemed) stay with the snorkelers. People were scattered over a large area in the water and in some cases, were told to just wait in the water when the first half of the group had already filled the skiff for the return trip to the big boat. It was a situation ripe with the potential for disaster. And the guide wasn’t around to stay with the people who had to remain in the water waiting. And if you wanted to jump in and swim off the big boat, the ladder was so high in the water that it was very difficult to get back on the boat – and there was no safety line deployed behind the boat to make it any easier, or safer, to get to the boat.
Other transportation was disappointing. The small group of us that went on the Gili Island extension had to wait over an hour at port the ferry terminal, after arriving back in Bali, for the driver to show up to transport people to the airport for thir flights. I stayed a couple extra nights in Bali before going home, and the driver that was supposed to transport me from the hotel to the airport never showed up at all – the hotel had to make alternate arrangements for me.
In closing, it was a wonderful, adventerous trip, but Exodus has some work to do to make it a little safer and comfortable.
