FLORES, Indonesia (7 June 2008) — A French tourist said on Saturday he and four other European divers spent two nights on a deserted Indonesian island eating shellfish and watching for komodo dragons as they awaited rescue. Laurent Pinel, 31, said the group survived off mussels scavenged from the beach and had to fight off a komodo dragon during the 36 hours they were waiting to be spotted on tiny Rinca island in the Komodo National Park. "We had nothing to eat. We ate some kind of mussels scraped from the rocks," he told AFP after reaching a medical clinic in this sleepy port on Flores island. "On the beach a komodo dragon came amongst us yesterday afternoon," he said, describing how the group had to pelt the dangerous reptile with rocks to scare it away. He said the divers -- three Britons, himself and a Swede -- had spent about nine hours adrift at sea after being swept away from their dive boat in a strong current late Thursday afternoon. Police earlier said the group had been adrift since they disappeared and were found Saturday morning at sea off Rinca island, but Pinel dismissed this information as inaccurate. He said they had struggled against the rip for several hours but eventually stopped swimming and tied themselves together by their diving vests to preserve energy. Late Thursday night they saw another island and decided to make one more effort to reach land before being swept out of the relative protection of the Nusa Tenggara island chain and into the open ocean. | | At one point in their ordeal, the survivors took on a Komodo dragon. "If we'd continued (to drift), it would have been the ocean," he said. "We were exhausted. Everyone had cramps." The group was found before midday on Saturday by national park rangers who took them to Labuanbajo, where they had set off Thursday for what was supposed to be a routine day of diving. Pinel said they were in relatively good condition considering their ordeal. |
