Traveling as I do can get a bit lonesome, so I jump at the opportunity to make new friends and have fun conversations. Fakhry was my willing victim, and after spending the day together and talking about his plans for the future, my travels, and our mutual likes for movies we started developing that personal connection. A little shyly he asked me how old I was, and almost fell off his chair when he learnt that I was nearly 70 years old. He must be in his late 20's, so he probably feels like he has witnessed one of The Ancient Ones still roaming the Earth!
On the subject of movies, he would like to see the newest Mission Impossible or Indiana Jones (but I already did); at the end we found out we both wanted to see Oppenheimer, so we agreed to meet at the movie theater at 8:30 pm and see it. It was a great, albeit poignant film about the Manhattan Project, the dropping of the bomb over Hiroshima and Nagasaki (which ever since I visited those cities 10 years ago I have considered a vile act of terrorism on the part of the US), and the political aftermath of MccArthyism on Oppenheimer himself and the scientific community at large. Good movie.
The following morning my new friend came to pick me up to take me to the airport, where yet another member of BMKG chaperoned me to the boarding area, where I met Dr. Suaidi, who is a geophysicist with BMKG and is going to be my guide through northern Sumatra. I also met my traveling companion, young Irvan (pronounced Irfan), who is a recent geology graduate who I have hired to travel with me through Indonesia. We got in the plane and a couple of hours later we landed in Silangit, a brand new airport in the middle of nowhere that was built to promote tourism into the Lake Toba highlands. Waiting for us was Kris, who is the BMKG Chief of Station, and three of her young assistants, who are going to be our companions exploring the surroundings of Lake Toba. By now I am beginning to feel like the Pied Piper, gathering more and more friends as I move through the land.
Lake Toba is one of the geologic wonders of this world. It is a caldera lake of enormous proportions (think 20 times as large as Crater Lake), formed by collapse of the roof of a magma chamber that erupted 74,000 years ago to form the Toba Ignimbrite, which probably represents about 5,000 cubic kilometers of magma erupted over a matter of hours or at most days! The rapid evacuation of such a large volume took away the support of the roof of the magma chamber, which collapsed to form a depression measuring 100 by 35 km. The residual magma in the chamber "pushed up" on the foundered roof and bulged it up to form a resurgent dome (Samosir Island) elongated in the same NNW-SSE direction as the caldera, 45 by 20 km in dimensions. I believe the plan for tomorrow is to take a sailboat to the island to visit the BMKG meteorological station there.
Lake Toba is also one of the most beautiful lakes I have ever seen (and this is not my first time to the rodeo), so I am hereby claiming it for myself. I am going to find some funding to do a limnological study of the lake so I can come spend some time here cruising the lake, taking water samples, and running temperature profiles. With any luck I can identify satellites that have enough resolution to do water temperature mapping, and perhaps tag shallow circulation patterns.
Indonesia is promoting this as a tourist area, so I will encourage you all to definitely come and spend a week hiking the fresh pine forests, taking the incredible views, and relaxing by the water. I suspect this will become one of the next vacation destinations for the jet set!
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