Cast your mind back to 1943, when the Japanese invaded Sumatra. The Dutch had built prosperous farms (coffee and tobacco) here, but this was still a pretty inaccessible mountainous land, so one might wonder why the Japanese entrenched themselves here against the constant battering of the allies. I don't know much about that stage of the war, but I think the Japanese had already made up their mind that they were not going to attack Australia, but were instead "securing" the southern boundary of their maritime empire. The fact is that after arriving in 1943 they pressed the Indonesians into forced labor to build extensive tunnels and galleries to serve as ammunition depots and troop bunkers. They were aided in their nefarious intentions by the abundance of mildly consolidated ignimbrites that were easily dug through (a lot cheaper and faster than building concrete bunkers given the abundance of forced labor).
The site of one of these tunnel complexes is close to downtown Bukittinggi, and is now converted into a park and overlook of the valley of the Sianok river. The park could well be called Monkey Land because it is overrun by a band of monkeys numbering in the hundreds. The monkeys are the overlords of the land, and guai the innocent tourist who buys a small plastic bag of peanuts "to feed the monkeys". Our innocent tourist, Irvan in this case, will be mobbed by monkeys who display no cuteness whatsoever, and instead snarl and attempt to bite the hand that is feeding them. The stress was too much for Irvan, who in panic threw the bag of peanuts unto the air. A deft old hand at this, an old monkey caught the bag in the air and ran away with his booty leaving behind a frustrated and angry mob. Please, don't feed the wild animals.
Our numbers have once again increased, as some of the young BMKG staff of the geophysics office in Padang came to join us. I need to start writing their names as I meet them. Right now I remember Sultan, Riszki, and Hafizh (and I hope I am spelling their names correctly), but there were a couple more.
We went through the tunnels, barely being able to imagine what the forced laborers went through to dig them. There was a particularly grizzly morgue, where tortured dead enemies were cut into pieces that were then thrown through a funnel to slide out to the river (and I imagine that if the funnel got clogged some poor soul would have to go down the slide to unclog it). Nasty! From the standpoint of an interested volcanologist the tunnels proved a disappointment, because in recent years the walls have been coated with gunite so you can see nothing. Only at one stop we found a place where the gunite had peeled off, and saw the ignimbrite was mildly indurated through vapor-phase alteration. Perfect material for stable tunnel excavation.
The view of the Sianok River from Monkey Land was truly spectacular, because the walls of the valley are formed by immense vertical cliffs of an Ignimbrite, which for all intents and purposes looked like the Toba Ignimbrite, although I knew it could not be it because we were hundreds of kilometers away and ignimbrites rarely travel for more than 50 km. I had to look for another smoking gun.
The bottom of the Great Wall Valley is blanketed by beautifully tended rice paddies and small farmhouses. It is the image of perfect serenity, although the looming bulk of Singalang volcano to the southwest puts it in considerable danger for damage by lahars.
We went down to the valley and confirmed, by looking at the pumice lumps, that this is not the Toba Ignimbrite, with its distinctive mineralogy of biotite, sanidine and a little quartz. No, this ignimbrite, which I will refer to as the Maninjau Ignimbrite, is characterized by apyhric pumice, likely of a high-silica rhyolitic composition. It looked too evolved to come from Singalang or Marapi volcanoes, so the likely culprit was Maninjau, which I had before misinterpreted as co-joined crater lakes and now realized must be an elongated caldera. I have to be careful with what I say, because Sauidi is very happy to follow-up on my crazy ideas, so when I asked if it was possible to visit Maninjau he obligingly changed the travel plan to accommodate my suggestion.
But before heading for the unknown we had to attend to the serious business of lunch. Food is delicious and plentiful here, but I was baffled why we were ordering so much. I grew up with the notion that you ate everything that is brought to the table, so after every meal I feel more than satisfied. I feel full to the brim. Well this time I was determined to eat more modestly and asked for belly, a dish I had seen yesterday eaten at another table (turns out to be sausages of tofu and something else stuffed in cow intestines; pretty good although the stuffing is a little bland). Almost immediately out comes this smorgaasboard of dishes, minus my belly dish, which included fish, chicken, and beef, all served with a colorful mosaic of savory sauces. But this time I held firm, and pretty soon I was eating my sausage and rice, while everyone else was also modestly eating a piece of chicken or a portion of beef. Half of the stuff that had been ordered was left untouched! I was baffled and had to ask. Then I learnt that no, we had not ordered all the dishes, but this was the way the restaurant presents its menu, from which you were free to choose. Only dishes consumed will be charged, and the untouched items will go back to the pot! OMG, what an eating epiphany!
I had a chance to put my newly acquired knowledge to work almost right away, because a foreign couple came in, and in sign language asked for the menu. The poor fools. You should have seen their look of panic as small dishes started pouring onto the table, while they frantically tried to explain that they wanted to see the menu. Almost in tears the gal protested that she was vegetarian. I tried to be helpful by explaining how this menu-in-front-of-your-eyes worked, and one of our guys spoke to the waiter and explained about the vegetarian thing. I am afraid this poor gal is going to have a hard time in Indonesia, because most of their veggie dishes are combined with meat.
Maninjau caldera, with its elongated caldera lake, is big and very beautiful, but not in the league of Toba. I would compare it with Crater Lake in Oregon. The lake is the site of a vigorous aquaculture effort, and obviously was a favored place of retreat by the Dutch, to judge by the style of the many old homes. It was raining, however, so both the mood and the view were slightly dampened by a thin mantle of fog. My desire to see the cladera threw our schedule considerably out of whack, so my crowd got hungry and decided it was time for an afternoon bowl of instant noodles. Apparently Indonesians love instant noodles, and I was a bit surprised at the enthusiasm with which they anticipated what I imagined as a cup-o-soup. Alright, when in Rome ... It took quite a bit of time to prepare the "instant" noodles, and when they came they were in proper bowls (and not in styrofoam cups), garnished with tasty spices and a fried egg. They were delicious :)
I may have mentioned that this is durian country, so I made the bad joke about eating a durian, and again Sauidi was happy to oblige. We had been driving long and hard, and it was already dark, when we pulled into a "durian restaurant" to have a durian dinner. Now, durian is a very strange fruit, about the size of a cantaloupe, but covered in a crust of spines, like some sort of armored dinosaur. Its main call to fame, however, is that it stinks. It stinks to high heaven. The durian restaurant, thus, is an open-air restaurant, where you are served tight little packets of sticky rice, with a sprinkling of shredded coconut, while you wait in anticipation for the main course. The waiter, wearing welder gloves, brings the durians to the table so they can be peeled back in quarts. Now is time to reach in for one of the fleshy seeds (about the size of a date) and suck in the soft fleshy outside. You need to hold your breath while this is going on, because if you smell what you are eating you might not be able to swallow it. It is actually quite tasty, accompanied by small gobs of sticky rice, and between us we dispatched a good dozen of durians. Travel is definitely a learning experience.
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