Danau Toba (Sumatra - Indonesia)

Danau Toba

The boat from Penang (Malaysia) to Belawan (Sumatra -Indonesia) was suprisingly efficient and relatively quick. It takes about 5 hours but you are unfortunately forced to endure the worst movies that anyone could find, including Robocop #6 and some kids film about the Loch Ness Monster!!! On the boat there were suprisingly few tourists - and which I would later find out was a common theme around Indonesia. I did meet two Americans - Paul and Robbie, a Polish girl - Megan and an Australian who had been living in France for the last 12 years - Henrietta.

None of us wanted to stay in the port town of Belawan and it was a short ride to the city of Medan. The third largest city in Indonesia, it is a relatively featureless and sprawling mess and again none of my party or myself wanted to stay there either. Lucily we didn't have to - we just managed to catch the last bus onwards. This bus journey was a good introduction to the general eventful and chaotic bus journeys that you seem to get across Indonesia. We nearly crashed about 6 times as cars seem to overtake cars that are already overtaking trucks. Our bus did the same. Horrifically we also saw one dead body in the road. A policeman was standing over him trying to disperse the crowds. The victim had two sheets of newspaper laid over him in a poor attempt to cover the man. Welcome to culture shock Indonesia.

We eventually arrived at our destination - Danau Toba (Lake Toba). To the average person, Toba is simply one giant lake. Beautiful but still a big lake. To a volcanologist, it is so much more than that. Let me give you a quick brief:

Toba is a super volcano (not very technical but thats what they are called). This isn't just a volcano - this is a huge volcano. Like that of Yellowstone in the USA, Toba covers a huge mass of land. When it erupted around 75,000 years ago it produced 2,800 cubic kilometers of material (St Helens produced 1 cubic kilometer and the last Yellowstone eruption produced 2,500 cubic kilometers), making it the largest eruption in the last 2 million years (largest in the Quaternary Period).

75,000 years ago the volcano literally blew its top off. The rim of the volcano then collapsed in on itself creating a collapse caldera, a large depression, that then filled with water to produce the extensive lake that stands today.

The eruption triggered pyroclastic flows which sped across the surrounding landscape, covering an area of 20,000 square kilometers, and ash fall-out drifted even further, found to cover a region of 4 million square kilometers (about half the size of continental USA) and has since turned up in Central Asia and the Middle East. Worryingly, the area is still seismically active.

The lake is South East Asia's largest (and is one of the deepest in the world at 450m) and at lt's centre is Pulau Samosir island. Myself and my new found crew took a boat to the island - which is the most popular place to stay. As we took the boat across, Megan lifts up her Lonely Planet book and pointing to the map asks me where the volcano is. I move my finger around the whole lake, explaining to her that the whole thing (everything inside the boundaries of the lake) is the volcano. I continue - "....the island in the middle, that we are heading to, is approximately the size of Singapore!!! So the lake and thus the volcano is far larger than the country which tips southern Malaysia. You can imagine who big the eruption must have been". She looks out over the lake a little confused - "actually...." she says "...I can't imagine that". Some things are just too big to comprehend, like the size of the Universe, the fact that there are actually more stars in the sky than grains of sand on the Earth or the fact that an eruption is big enough to swallow the country of Singapore with ease. The volcano is 1707 square kilometers - thats big!!!

Actually I have to tell you about this young Polish girl. Megan is not like any traveller I have met before. She doesn't stay in any place for any length of time. As soon as she has arrived somewhere she is already leaving. She had come all this way to Toba - thats a boat, two buses and then another boat, to only spend 2 hours on the island before she was heading off to Java!!! She would then be in Bali a few days later. She had already covered 6 countries in record time. I can't imagine that she could have seen very much except the inside of a bus. But each to their own I suppose.

My new team minus Megan didn't hang around. We dumped our bags and trekked to the top ridge, the highest point on the island. It's a steep and tiring climb but at the top are great panoramic views of the lake. We stayed one night at the top (Jenny's Guesthouse) - perhaps the most authentic place I have stayed yet. It's basically a small farm. When she offered us coffee - she went off to ground the beans which she had grown. I'm no coffee expert but it was the best I have ever had. For dinner - she went off to pick fresh potatoes and home-grown rice. Food is supposed to be excellent across Indonesia especially for produce such as coffee because the whole country is made of volcanic islands and volcanic soils are rich in minerals - it's what keeps people on the slopes of even the most dangerous active volcanoes around the world.

I had also brought my football to the top of the ridge. I had bought it in Thailand and had now been carrying it for the last 3 months mainly to play with other travellers and of course the local kids. Suddenly from out of no-where, kids came flocking to play. Then dads, brothers, nephews, sons and uncles were all joining in with myself and the two Americans. Before long we had a chaotic 5-a-side game going. We were having a kick about in the middle of one of the world's largest and most destructive volcanoes - though, I can't think of a better place to play.

Actually, despite it's fiery past, travellers flock to Toba for peace and quiet. It's stunning scenery and laid back atmosphere is pure tranquility.

Toba is a stratovolcano, created as the result of subduction of the Indian Ocean Plate beneath the Eurasian Plate. This produces a series of volcanoes travelling the western side of Sumatra, from Toba in the north, all the way down south to the islands southern tip. I just happened to be going south - thats lucky........but before I would get to my next destination I would have the bus journeys to top all bus journeys - this is it, the one i'll never forget...........