To further clarify my thinking about doing some limnological research on the lakes of Indonesia, my plan for the next two days is to go visit the Beratan and Batur calderas, on the northeast corner of the island. The goal today is to visit the triplet lakes of Beratan, Buyan, and Tamblingan. It is also a good excuse to escape the touristy Denpasar and head for the mountains. Our driver, Hussein, is a cheerful young man who speaks very little English, so Irvan and him kept an easy flow of conversation in Indonesian on the front seats, while I admired the landscape from the back seat. We were on a very narrow mountain road, surrounded by the traditional cloud of scooters and dodging incoming traffic, but Hussein had it all under control and slowly we worked our way to the high mountains.
I was expecting bucolic solitude at Beratan lake, but instead found a thriving tourist Mecca! Apparently I am not the only bule who thought a trip to the mountains would be a good idea; plus it is Sunday and quite a few locals decided to come spend the day in the cool of the lake.
In my humble opinion the recreational potential of the lake itself is underutilized (although there are small paddle boats shaped like swans that would make a very fine platform for lake research), but the shores are crowded with gardens, coffee shops, Hindu temples, and vendors that are trying to use all possible gimmicks to earn a few rupiah. There is, for example, the wildlife photographer, who for a fee will let you hold one of his many critters and take your photograph. The critters include fat iguanas, large horned owls, giant bats, and a civet. It was bright daylight, so the bats were hanging upside down, cocooned under their huge leathery wings, but they would allow you to open their wings and hold them long enough to take a selfie. The civet or luwak is a smelly animal the size of a large raccoon but with a thick long tail and a very pointy nose. It has a couple of claims to fame: First, the musk of its anal glands was widely used in the manufacture of fine perfumes (think Channel 5), although Channel claims that it has been using synthetic equivalents since the year 2000. Second, although it is a carnivorous animal, it likes to eat coffee beans! This made him a pest to the coffee growers until someone had the brilliant idea of collecting the droppings, which were full of perfectly good seeds that had been stripped of their flesh by the digestive system of the civet, and then roasting them to produce "Luwek Coffee" and market it to the coffee aficionados of the world as a unique delicacy. I am sure Dennis would love to give it a try, but I am putting Luwek Coffee in the same category as roasted dog in Vietnam, or grilled tarantulas in China, and declaring it cibus non gratum.
Beratan caldera is very young, to judge from the steepness of the caldera wall. It is slightly elongated, like Long Valley caldera in California, and developed a resurgent dome that was soon surrounded by a moat and a lake inside the moat. The resurgent dome "leaked", and a big stratovolcano was built atop it (Mount Bratan), restricting the lake to the north portion of the moat. This steep volcano suffered one flank collapse that separated Lake Beratan to the east, from the rest of the moat lake, and a later lahar split the northwestern lake into Buyan and Tamblingan lakes. So all three lakes are true triplets, born at the same time (plus they are hydraulically connected). And how do I know this? Never underestimate the power of Google Maps!
Legend tells us that a group of people reached the caldera floor, which at the time was a vast plain underlain by fertile volcanic soils. So they started planting crops that did very well indeed. Soon they started planting rice, and the soils were so productive that the people grew rich and barely had to work to make a living. So then they became bored, and the men started playing with their hoes as if they were spears, and instead of turning the soil gently they stabbed it mercilessly. Eventually something had to go wrong, one of the men stabbed a water vein, and water started bubbling out of the ground. And it bubbled and bubbled, until eventually the fertile plain was covered with water. There was much gnashing of teeth and regret, so finally Shiva took mercy on the people, and had a tree grow out of the water and plug the hole. A very holy temple was built at the site and is a major pilgrimage spot for the people of Bali.
We moved from lake to lake, and at noon had a tasty lunch at Terrace d'Lac, perched on the high rim of the caldera, where a local chef has elevated regional cuisine to international standards. We were thus ready to start on the drive back home, happy and satisfied. Little did we know that Hussein was starting down the road to Calvary. OMG, we got snarled in the biggest traffic jam north of Australia! Seems like every Sunday visitor chose this very time to head back down the mountain, so what should have taken an hour took us close to four hours. Indonesians are pretty cool and relaxed drivers, but I can tell you that nerves were frayed and some of the moves were clearly fueled by desperation.
But at the end we made it to Denpasar, had a tasty ramen noodle dinner, and hit the sack.
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