Funny story. So we got up at 3am to meet our drivers to the sunrise tour to see a temple, which was an hour away. We got to this little village and went into one of the rooms, where we were told to wait and eat (they gave us tea and toast) while waiting on the other people to join us. Long story short, they took us to the wrong tour. We were getting briefed on our climb up Mt. Merapi when we realized this isn't what I think it is. I re-read the confirmation, and still have NO idea how there was a mix up, but the original reason we came to Indonesia was to climb this mountain so we decided to stay. Quick back history: Merapi, meaning fire (mer) mountain (api) in Sanskrit, is considered to be the most active volcano in the world, given this title by a group of vulcanologist who are in charge of making this list. It erupts big at least once a year, with larger explosions every 7 years and HUGE ones every 70. The mountain is surrounded by many small villages, which we could consider to be developing places. In Nov 2010, they had their 7-0 year gigantic explosion. It killed 300 people and there are 100 missing. They had a month warning thanks to technology, but a few villages refused to clear out because they believe their daily prayers and offerings would prevent the volcano to explode. The village closest to the dangerous side, the south where the eruption flows happened this time, decided to all stay put (there was 30 of them) since their chief spiritual man said it won't explode, I've been praying. They unfortunately were all buried alive in the explosion.
Our guide, Christian, was a very famous man in his country. His village was the most developed due to his fame. There is one ecologist on the main 5 islands of Indonesia, and he was Java's ecologist. He was man of the year in Indonesia a few years back. He is also a firefighter and in his 60s. He told us we would be going up on a hill/ridge where its considered to be the level 3 danger zone. He was one of the few allowed there because of his expertise and said we would be safe. It was drizzling when we left at 5am, and the sun was barely up when we started the walk. Within 20 min, we had reached the danger zone, which was a little scary if you lived in that village! We stood on the ridge facing the mountain. Now imagine. To the left, was the Kaliurung village we had just left. The trees in the forest were standing with no leaves, but there was lots of green low brush growing back. To the right was N.O.T.H.I.N.G. For as far as the eye could see, there were flattened trees, all brown and no green, burnt by the 1000C + hot pyroclastic flow that had tore through the area. All the trees looked like sticks, flattened in the same direction. The valley below us we were looking in had mini gorges in it, caused by another giant explosion in the 1000AD time period. There was literally no green anywhere to be seen, it was unreal.
In the distance you could see the villages. Christian pointed us out the first village that got hit where the villagers decided to stay. They had since dug out the houses. There was a line of small villages on another ridge next to the valley, with destroyed houses that looked very odd, as they were colorfully painted, the only color in the stripped land. There was a temporary road that had been built. Christian said the villagers lived in a temporary government refugee camp and would return to their village only during the day, when it was safe, to keep tabs on their belongings. Apparently, many city people would come to the evacuated villages and steal things.There was a total of 22 villages destroyed by the blast. All of this happened in only 13 minutes.
We stayed on this ridge for another 2 hours about. Christian showed us growing tiger balm and cinnamon. We had lots of fallen tree to climb over, it was quite a hike. We came across a former seismology center. In the month before the explosion, it was stripped of its equipment for safety reasons. The left over steel structure was grossly twisted and knocked down, completely destroyed and useless. It was magnificent in a very scary way. When the morning haze cleared, you could clearly see all the way to the top of the 2975m volcano. It had blown off 10m from Nov 2010, previously 2985m. The explosion caused the peak to explode in half, resulting in two peaks with the crater in the middle. There was huge columns of white smoke coming out of the top, which was safe, given it wasn't black. Christan told us he uses a combination of technology and nature to determine when the volcano will erupt. Technology can track the rising lava from inside the crater, but there are other natural ways to tell. He told me three ways and I only remember two. First, snakes will start to run away, since they live underground and can sense the changes. Also, dogs will start to bark at the volcano. Speaking of animals, there are macaws and black panthers that live whats left of the forest around Merapi. Christan had seen 3 panthers i nth 6 years he has been giving tours and believes there are only 10 left since the explosion. They live in the caves right near the base of the volcano.
We reached the end of the ridge and found flowers laid on newspaper. Locals still come to give offerings to the volcano. Christian told us of the horror stories of 1 of the people who has died climbing the volcano, because he chose to take a bad path (he was actually climbing it on the rock faces) and about a couple who was lost for 4 days and the rescue efforts that went into finding them. He said the royal family and Yogya sultan come out once a year to make their annual offerings. They and many others believe there is an invisible kingdom inside the volcano. Christian said he doubts if he will ever climb to the peak ever again after this past explosion. He believes is a sign from nature that the mountain is saying "stop putting your feet on me, leave me alone" and he is going to respect that.
We continued down another way into the more protected valley near Kaliurung village. We came across a park and waterfall snuggled up to the valley, which had much destruction from falling trees from the blast. The waterfall was tall but weak, this being the beginning of dry season in Indonesia. We same to the "touristy" part of the park. Once again, we are the only tourists around. This is not an area for tourists or westerners, as most of the "tourists" are people from local villages. We had our second of three breakfasts, a nice variety of local breakfast foods. There was these fried omelet looking things, with tomatoes, onions, etc that you ate with whole green chile's. They had friend bananas and my favorite, sticky coconut rice you sandwich around cooked soy with brown sugar. Delicious. We walked back to the village a bit later after talking to Christian a bit more about Indonesia and went to our starting point where we had yet another breakfast, this time more westernized. We got banana pancakes, like the amazing pancakes we had in Bintan (Indonesia) With bananas inside we dipped in honey. We got fruit also, which included avocado. He brought out fresh milk for our tea "from the cow down the street" that had been taken that morning. Amazing!
It was a little funny, Christian had asked us about Obama. Everybody in Indonesia said two things when they met us. They asked Alma is she was mixed (Asia, which she isn't) and if we knew Obama. He studied around here in high school, his step dad from Indonesia. Christan said when he came to visiting in November after the explosion, he spoke Indonesia and pretty much dropped everybody to the floor when he spoke.
We decided to not go back to the temple, as we pretty much had no money left, and to catch a bus and go to Solo. It was a two hour bus ride through cities with no AC and people here don't have a large of a bubble as Americans do, so it was very crowded and awkward. About every stop, which consisted of a guy hanging out the back of the bus door, which were opened the whole ride, and he would bang on the bus if he saw a guy waving the bus down. The bus slowed down, didn't stop, and the passenger would make a leap onto the bus. There were musicians that got on about every stop, mostly young men with tattoos and ear piercings singing and playing the guitar or ukulele. They would come around for tips at the end. On the way back from Solo, we had some rude musicians get all bothered that us two tourists didn't give them loads of money, since everyone assumes us to be rich, but it wasn't that bad the whole time. The music was nice! There were a few people tyring to sell food and wallets and pens (weird), they would give them to you and come back around to see if you wanted to pay or if you opened the food and already started eating it. I almost fell for that, confused why I was getting free food, but caught on luckily.
Solo was quite disappointing. I had read its the cultural rival to Yogya and less touristy so you can see the real Indonesia. I think it had more to do with the fact that NOBODY had a map so we were lost literally 100% of the time we were there and it was Sunday, the day of rest, so about 90% of everything was closed. NOBODY spoke English. IT was hard trying to tell people where to go in the tuk-tuks, which we only knew one place that was open the antique market. Big rip off. Nobody wanted to haggle, which was weird, because there are NO tourists that come here, so who else would buy their junk? There were a few rude people here, but we figured they aren't as sued to tourists as Yogya and everywhere else was so it was whatever. We wandered around another local market, lost, and upset that we couldn't even book a bike tour like we wanted too since all the tour guide were off on Sundays. IT was bad planning, and we ended up just getting back on the bike and leaving. It was just a day of confusion from the start, as we got mega lost when we returned to Yogya but eventually found our way back to our hostel, where we sat down for some westernized Indonesian food and beer.
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