Crossing the Equator and Driving inside Volcanoes

The Caldera and Lake Maninjau

Minang Palace

The north of Sumatra has had some of the largest volcanic eruptions in history. In the past week we have driven round the inside of two old caldera, Lake Maninjau near Bukit Tinggi which erupted around 55,000 years ago and left a caldera 30kms by 8kms, now filled with a lake. We spent the night on the rim, then drove down the 44 hairpin bends on the road into the caldera. Once it was a developing tourist destination, but when tourism declined they turned to fish farming, with numerous nets of farmed tilapia. A road runs round the lake under the rim where landslides are a hazard and emergency escape signs and paths have been created. Every possible area of the caldera edges is farmed, the shallower places for rice, and the steeper slopes for vegetables.

Into the Northern Hemisphere

Having explored further the Minang culture with a visit to a traditional village centred round the mosque, a long meeting house, and the kings palace, recently rebuilt after a fire caused by lightening destroyed it in 2007, we headed north to Lake Toba, crossing the equator en route. As we moved into the province of North Sumatra from Central Sumatra there was a sudden change, as all the villages now had one or more Christian churches, and hardly a mosque in sight. North Sumatra also appeared much poorer with the villages frequently comprising of many very small wooden houses, and the minor roads to the villages in a very poor condition, although much work is underway to improve them.

Sumatra Surili Mitered Leaf Monkey

We climbed steadily until the turn off to Lake Toba when we started to drop down a steep cliff with spectacular views into the caldera. Lake Toba is huge - 100kms long by 30kms wide - and was created by the explosion of a supervolcano around 70,000 years ago - believed to be the largest explosive eruption on earth in the last 25 million years. 2,800 cubic kilometres of rock were ejected with the ash from the eruption leaving significant deposits in Lake Malawi in Africa and up to 9m of ash in India! Global temperatures are believed to have dropped by between 3 and 5 degrees Celcius for several years. The centre of the caldera has now flooded creating a huge lake, but uplift of the centre of the caldera has created a large island within the lake. We spent a day driving round the island, passing through lots of villages where the traditional Batak houses dominate and are still a significant part of the community. The caldera seems to create its own weather with clouds hanging over and along the walls and rain storms sweeping across the lake. Waterfalls cascade down the rim walls, which rise 800m from the lake, fed by the regular rain storms. Unlike most of Sumatra the forest on the rim is mainly conifer and there is a lot of natural grassland surrounding the caldera.


Batak Village

Needing to renew our visas we have now dropped down into Medan to visit the immigration office, and we will try and get the wheel bearings greased / replaced as they are running hot, not surprising after the hammering they have taken on the broken tarmac roads here in Indonesia. Once all sorted we are heading to the northern tip at Banda Aceh.
 
     


Lake Toba



Brahminy Kite

120m waterfall into lake Toba