Gunung Api

Kevin and I climbed Gunung Api today, the fire mountain. It?s green circular cone is pregnant and imposing. It taunts and beguiles you to come hither. A friend of Allan?s ferried us across the channel. No sooner than the first five minutes of climbing Kevin and I were drenched in sweat. It is humid and tropical like a greenhouse. Bushes, ferns, and huge spider webs block the haphazard trail up. In Indonesian the word for spider is ?laba laba?. These ones are about as big as my palm. Small lizards shuffle through the undergrowth and once I caught a glimpse of the large blue-green fruit pigeons that Wallace described from these islands. The nutmeg pigeon.

The trail winds through black crumbly volcanic stones and pebbles. As we get higher it gets quite trecherous as the loose rocks begin to form mini-avalanches beneath your feet. We stop for a rest, we shouldn?t have waited so late in the morning to begin! The air is thick with heat now - like breathing in a sauna, thick with moisture. Emerging at the top thoroughly sweat soaked and exhausted we sat down to rest in the sea breezes.

The ground is warm like a hot cushion and I have to remind myself we?re sitting on the summit of an active volcano. Looking down, Banda Neira village looks very small and vulnerable from up here. In the other direction the distant islands of Hatta and Aie beckon beyond, mere blips in the flat Banda Sea. Still as calm as a placid lake.

Whispy warm sulphur fumes mingle with the cool sea breeze. We wander near the edge to take photos. Below a gaping crater drops hundreds of feet down trailing crusty old lava flows like a runny nose. And huge butterflies seem to be everywhere up here flapping along drowsily under the clouds. Papilio ulysses I believe these large ones are called, famed as great wanderers hence their name. They seem to catch the breezes and appear from no-where like lovely apparitions. Bedecked in blues, blacks, and yellow, they are bigger than my outstretched hand. If Wallace were here I imagine he?d be chasing after them for his collections. I?m happy to just watch them dance on the breeze and too exhausted to do much else anyway.

So what more can I say about this day. Words can only go so far to capture so many happy memories. We gazed out on the Banda Sea from the top of a towering volcano. We sat in the cool breeze of the sea mixing with sulphur clouds. And giant butterflies flitted by, bedraggled like prayer flaps off to various destinations. So I tried to live presciently in the moment and be thankful. Maybe spirit heard. While I sat so quitely lost in thought one of those butterflies drifted down and landed there right on my nose. I imagine she was trying to tell me something.