Lombok to Flores Cruise: 4 Days via Komodo and the Whale Sharks

Most Komodo boats sail a loop and put you back where you started. This one keeps going west, across Sumbawa, and lands you in Lombok four days later. It is the crossing between Flores and Lombok that most people make by plane in an hour, done slowly, with the two islands nobody flies over in between.

The Lombok to Flores route

Two days inside Komodo National Park cover the stops people fly in for: Padar and its three-bay ridge, the pink sand at Long Beach, the ranger walk through dragon country at Komodo Village, and a dawn drift over the manta cleaning stations at Karang Makassar. Then the boat clears the park boundary, crosses the Sape Strait, and spends two days somewhere no Komodo itinerary reaches.

The whale sharks at Teluk Saleh

Teluk Saleh is a bay on the north coast of Sumbawa where fishermen anchor bagan platforms, lit at night to draw baitfish. Whale sharks learned to come for the same fish, and they arrive before dawn while the lamps are still on. You go out by tender at first light and swim with them from the surface. They are wild animals, not a show, and nobody can promise you a sighting on a given morning. What can be promised is that the boat is there at the right hour, at the one place on this coast where they gather.

Satonda and Moyo

Satonda is a volcanic island with a saltwater crater lake in the middle of it, a short walk up from the beach. Moyo, further west, has the waterfall that people ride two hours from Sumbawa Besar to see, and you arrive at it from the water with the island to yourselves. Two stops that exist on this route and on almost no other.

Which direction to book

The trip runs both ways on a fixed calendar, roughly twice a month in season. Sailing Flores to Lombok puts Komodo on the first two days, while you are freshest, and ends near the Gilis, which is where most people want to be afterwards. Sailing Lombok to Flores builds toward Komodo and finishes at Labuan Bajo, which is the better order if you are flying onward from there or continuing into Flores. Tell us which way round you want and we will send the dates.

The boat

Lady Grace is thirty-four metres with ten cabins, so the boat carries twenty to twenty-five guests rather than the six or eight of a small phinisi. That is the trade this route asks for: a bigger hull is a steadier one on an open-sea crossing, and there is a jacuzzi on the sundeck for the long afternoons between islands.

What the crossing actually asks of you

This is not a day trip repeated four times. Two of the four days involve real distance across open water, the Sape Strait on day two and the Alas Strait on day four, and the sea between Sumbawa and Lombok is not always flat. Bring something for motion sickness even if you never normally need it. Mornings start early, because the manta drift and the whale sharks both happen at first light and neither waits. In return you get two islands, three of Indonesia's best-known dive and snorkel sites, and a bay full of whale sharks, without unpacking once.