Initially, I’m impressed. Have policy makers finally learnt their lesson from the mess that was made of Bali? Impressed, that is, until I realize that no mention has been made of new laws to stop non-locals buying up big tracts of land, or government-backed soft loans schemes to help locals with the starting capital to get a business up and running. This and several other factors indicate the unlikelihood of Labuan Bajo becoming a booming tourist town in the short term. One is the cost of building. While land is cheap, both our hosts had to import most of their building materials by boat from other islands. For example, Kamdani’s half-kilometer long jetty at Puri Komodo was brought in from Kalimantan, and the pretty garden at the hilltop holiday house of Feisol Hashim - a Bali-based businessman and fishing enthusiast who had the Minister’s entourage to lunch on the second day - was transplanted from Bali. A second point is that 52% of the reef around Komodo National Park, which includes the komodo dragon-inhabited Komodo and Rinca Islands as well as 22 dive sites thus making it the area’s top tourism potential, is damaged due to destructive fishing methods - mainly cyanide bombing. The Nature Conservancy, which has an office in Labuan Bajo, has been working with local fishers and the national park authority to stop bombing, rehabilitate damaged reef and come up with a plan for its future management. Nevertheless, in one of its many glossy brochures that are distributed freely to the Minister’s group, the international agency complains that “the speed at which Indonesian marine tourism is growing is not supported by an appropriate infrastructure to preserve the primary attraction - the coral reefs.” In view of this, it may be a good thing if western Flores’ hoped-for tourism boom is postponed for a few years. As the Conservancy notes, “without careful monitoring, tourism growth may result in disturbed and damaged habitats.” Pollution due to sewage from tourist facilities is already an emerging problem in Komodo Island’s sheltered, semi-enclosed bays.

Not that the land and sea around Labuan Bajo’s coastline appears at all bombed out. From on board the speed boat that ferries us to Batu Gosok, the view is one of contrasts of colour, texture and elevation, enough to send any lurking city-bound images - dull, hard surfaces, sealed roads and computer screens - scurrying from one’s memory in shame. Buffered by a slalom-track of islands that channel it past the mainland, the sea is glassy. Its surface is broken only by the pale limestone earth that, Poseidon-like, seems to heave itself from the wet blueness into dramatic undulations, creased and blanketed in a dusty green.