Krakatau
His violent, self-destructive father died before he was born. Anak Krakatau was forced to grow up fast and was under intense pressure all his life. Will he follow the same path as his father?
It sounds like the synopsis of a cheesy daytime drama, but the story of Anak Krakatau, or Son of Krakatoa, is pulled from a geology textbook. Krakatau was a volcanic island in the Sunda Strait until 1883, when it erupted – exploded, really – with such force that it was heard 3,000 miles away, and the pressure wave was measured to circle the earth seven times. The resulting tsunami killed 36,000 people, and 21 cubic kilometers of debris were thrown into the air. My attention was originally drawn to this mind-boggling event by the children’s novel The 21 Balloons, about a schoolteacher balloonist who discovers Krakatau and then escapes moments before its massive explosion. Ever since then Krakatau has been stuck firmly in my imagination. So when I realized that from Jakarta we would be within striking distance of its former location, I decided we had to go. We took a slow bus from Jakarta to Labuhan, then an angkot (minibus that takes casual passengers) to Carita, from where we departed by boat the next day.
Krakatau itself was all but annihilated in the explosion, but in 1927 Anak Krakatau broke water near its former location and has been growing at a rate of thirteen centimeters per week. Since March 24th of this year, Krakatau has been especially active, and it shows – eruptions happened just about every five minutes. During the day this was heard as a massive boom and a cloud of smoke – white, grey, or sometimes black.
We landed on Baby Krakatau itself to see the booming up close and hike about 100m up the 300m cone. This is the epitome of black sand beach, beautiful little shiny bits of volcano everywhere. Littered along the path were fallen lava bombs. Our guide pointed out a big one, about the size of a collie, lying next to a tree branch it broke off when it fell, about a month ago. From a distance we had seen these black rocks fly up out of the caldera, going probably 60 meters high before falling back.
The highlight of the trip, though, was camping on Rakata Island. This is the only remnant of the original Krakatau island, a chain of three volcanoes. Rakata itself was blown in half and still has a clear half-cone shape. We landed on a small beach on the north side of the island, which would have been inside the volcano before it exploded. We watched Baby Krakatau erupt three kilometers away as it slowly got dark and our guides brought us hot tea and mie goreng. In the dark the little mountain really showed its temper. Those rocks that looked black in daylight are still hot enough to glow bright red in the dark, and the eruptions started to look properly fiery and wrathful. The atmosphere were perfectly mild, and we lay about on mats under the trees, watching the geology and talking desultorily. Behind our sliver of beach, the island rose into a sheer wall of jungle, and in it we saw, of all things, dozens of fireflies! Green lights behind, red lights ahead, it was just beautiful.
In the morning several monitor lizards, up to about three feet long, came snooping around our camp for scraps and fish bones. We packed up – or rather, our local guides did, about seven of them for thirteen tourists in our group – and motored around to the other side of Rakata, where we snorkelled at a nice little coral reef before lunch and returning to Carita, the town from which we started.
No trip report would be complete without some snarking, so here it is. There was garbage everywhere! Krakatau is located in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra, two very long islands. This means strong northerly currents sweep past it, including those that drain the rivers of Jakarta. And Indonesians everywhere throw their trash in the street, or in the river, or in big heaps where it can blow away, because there is no decent trash disposal infrastructure. So all of this, especially empty water bottles and plastic bags, floats past Carita in a kilometers-wide strip, and to a slightly lesser extent out by Anak Krakatau. During the two hours out to the islands we had to stop repeatedly while a couple of the guides cleared the engine of plastic debris.
Out on the islands, the styrofoam mingles with white pumice that looks nearly identical, and the visual effect is multiplicative. Add that to all the other debris on the beaches (strangest: several intact light bulbs. But then, if they weren’t intact, they wouldn’t have washed up), and the effect is quite sad. This is a national park after all.
I asked the leader of our tour company about this when we were back on land. Obviously they can’t do anything about the currents of garbage, but what about on the island? He said they had organized a big social outing with a lot of students and nature lovers, and cleaned the beaches pretty well. They stayed clean about six months, which was much better than I expected. Given that the tour company does advertise eco tours, I think they should schedule an hour or two of beach cleanup into each trip, which would probably be sufficient to keep things in decent shape.
To end on a high note, there were four really pleasant Indonesian women on our trip with us. I assumed they were all family, but it turns out they had just met that morning. They’re members of a nine thousand-strong mailing list called Indo Backpackers, for Indonesians who like to travel and sightsee on the cheap. One of them has been to nearly every major island of Indonesia, a distinct rarity in a country where most people never leave their home island. Another, a young woman, blew apart some stereotypes I had about women who wear the hijab that I hadn’t consciously recognized. Though she always covered her hair, and her arms were covered to the wrists, she was extremely adventurous, outgoing and well-travelled. She studied in Indiana, spent three months in Hawaii, and has visited Japan and probably a number of other places we never talked about. She even brought with her a burqini, a full-body swim suit including head cover, so she could take part in the snorkelling. We swapped emails and will hopefully keep in touch – she even said she was planning a Thailand trip and might meet us there.
We’ve got four weeks left in Indonesia, but I’m already feeling strapped for time, there’s still so much we want to do. Next up (after we return to Jakarta) is going to Manado to get certified for diving.
on May 19, 2009 at 6:23 pm
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