Padar, Pink Beach & Komodo

These three places account for almost every photograph that brings people to Flores, and they are essentially never sold separately. That is not a marketing decision — it is geography. They sit within an hour or so of each other on the same loop, and a boat that has come out from Labuan Bajo is going to pass all three anyway.

So the useful question is not which one to book. It is what each is actually like when you are standing on it.

Padar Island: the climb, and the light

The photograph everyone has seen is taken from a ridge on Padar looking down over three curved bays, each with a beach of a different colour. It is genuinely as good as it looks. Two things the photograph does not tell you.

It is a climb. A stepped trail of roughly 20 to 30 minutes to the main viewpoint, steep, exposed and completely unshaded. It is not technical, but it is not a stroll, and doing it at ten in the morning in the dry season is unpleasant in a way that doing it at half past six is not. This is the single strongest argument for either a speedboat that gets there first or an overnight boat that is already anchored below it.

The hills change colour with the season. Padar is brown and gold through the dry months from roughly May to October, and green after the rains from December through March. Most of the famous images are the green version. Neither is better — the brown version has better light and calmer seas — but it is worth knowing which one you are booking, and the best time guide covers the trade.

Pink Beach: real, and subtler than the pictures

Pantai Merah is genuinely pink, and it is one of a handful of beaches worldwide where that happens. The colour comes from fragments of red organ-pipe coral broken down and mixed through white sand.

It reads strongest right at the waterline, where the wet sand concentrates it, and in flat morning or late light rather than under a midday sun. Heavily saturated photographs oversell it; standing there, it is a clear warm blush rather than a strawberry. The snorkelling immediately off the beach is the better reason to stop — the reef starts within a few metres of the sand and is one of the easiest entries in the park.

Komodo Island: dragons, and how you actually see them

You walk with a licensed park ranger on a marked trail. Independent walking is not permitted anywhere on the trekking islands, and the ranger sets the distance and carries a forked staff. Dragons are genuinely dangerous animals — the largest lizards alive, and ambush predators — and the rules exist for good reasons.

Sightings are reliable rather than guaranteed. Rangers know where the animals rest, most often near water sources and around the ranger station, and groups see them most days. You are looking at wild animals in their own habitat, which is both the appeal and the reason nothing is scripted.

Some boats go to Rinca rather than Komodo Island. Rinca is closer to Labuan Bajo, usually quieter, and dragon sightings there are just as dependable — the ranger fee structure differs slightly, but as an experience it is a fair substitute rather than a downgrade.

What usually comes fourth

Almost every itinerary adds a snorkelling stop after the three, and this is the one that moves. Manta Point if the current allows, otherwise Taka Makassar’s sandbar, Kanawa or Siaba. If a specific fourth stop matters to you, check the listing rather than assuming — it varies more between operators than the first three do.

Booking the loop

Any full-day boat trip from Labuan Bajo covers all three, from $88. A speedboat covers them and adds two or three more stops. An overnight trip covers them with the Padar climb happening at sunrise instead of mid-morning, which is the version most people picture when they book.

Park fees are excluded from nearly every listing, and since 1 April 2026 the permit has to be pre-booked through the government’s SiOra system two to three days ahead under a 1,000-visitor daily quota — with separate per-site allocations for Komodo Island and Padar. Foreign visitors pay IDR 250,000 marine park entry plus a IDR 25,000 harbour fee, with the trekking-island ranger fee charged per group ashore. Details in the fees guide.