We faced the possibility of a "dead day" at the airport, because our hotel is inside the airport, and we spent last night here and also this coming night. Maybe it would be fun to emulate Tom Hanks, but this is not JFK airport, and there is nothing to do. The airport is being renovated, and out of our room window we can see the facade of the old airport, which is slowly being torn down. Our room is a bit cramped, so just hanging out there is not an attractive prospect.
But BMKG once again came to our rescue, for Irvan received a message letting us know that a driver was ready to take us around, so we jumped at the offer. I was curious to visit the Bili-Bili Reservoir, which was formed by a dam built across the Jeneberang River. It is a nice reservoir, maybe the size of Comanche, but I am not sure what it was built for. A look at Wikipedia tells me that it was built in 1991 with a loan from Japan, and it holds 300,000 acre-feet of water. It is managed by the state electricity company, but I didn't see a hydroelectric plant. Water from the reservoir is sent to the municipal water agencies of Makassar and Gowa, but it has to be clarified before it can be distributed, and to judge by the sediment load on the Jeneberang River my guess is that the turbid water is allowed to bypass the potable water intake structures.
The Jeneberang River is a typical mountain river that carries enormous amount of sediment that forms gravel bars, sand banks, and debris flows. Entrepreneurial Indonesians have developed quite an industry of sand and gravel extraction, which brought some sarcastic comments from Irvan. My dear friend is environmentally conscious, and his little green heart has had many palpitations as we have witnessed large-scale coal mining, nickel mining from laterites, oil and gas extraction, methane extraction from coal, cement plants around the thick limestones, serpentinite quarrying, and now sand and gravel excavation. I joke with him that ten years from now he will either be an elderly forever-student at the university in Yogyakarta, or a big fish in the oil and gas industry. Time will tell.
As we moved along the watershed of the Jeneberang I was, once again, impressed by the beauty of the countryside. The small villages looked well looked after and reasonably prosperous. We drove past a market where all sorts of beautiful fruits were on display, and customers were busy doing their weekly shopping and enjoying the social event. There may not be much to do around here, but if you were in a contemplative mood you could easily lie in a hammock under the shade and read a good book (or go through your social media feeds) for a few peaceful hours.
We continued up the canyon until we reached a high enough elevation to have the vegetation replaced by pine trees, and the temperature drop by a good 5 degrees Celsius. On the way up we passed many young couples riding motorcycles but with backpacks and bedrolls on their backs, clearly planning to do a big hike as a group, or maybe even camp for the weekend. The day seemed perfect for being in the great outdoors. We stopped for lunch, and afterward were planning on hiking up to a waterfall over columnar basalts. Alas, it was not to be; just as we were finishing lunch a thunderstorm came out of nowhere and instantly drenched the forest. Those poor hikers. We waited for 10 minutes seeing if it would abate, but a look at the BMKG weather radar (yes, there is an app for that) showed that there were fat wet clouds moving into the area at a slow but unstoppable pace. Prudence prevailed, and our excellent BMKG driver, Pak Taba, braced for the descent under heavy rain.
So this is it. Tomorrow we take a flight at 5:45 am to Bali, where we will have a couple of hours layover before moving forward to Labuan Bajo, on the west end of the island of Flores.
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