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Volcanoes welcomed me to, and bid me farewell when I left, Jogjakarta

I always take the window seat whenever I ride an airplane.  This was not the case when we flew from Jakarta to Jogjakarta.  LS insisted she take the window seat as she wanted a good look of the view and I surprised myself by giving in to her demand.  Of course I was a little irritated when LS fell a sleep for most of the flight and never got to see the view.  I was wide awake during the flight and could have made good use of the window seat.  But, my irritation did not last long.  From my seat, I saw what appeared to be mountains welcoming me to Jogjakarta.  I found out later that what I saw were not mountains but the volcanoes of Java.  I was thrilled when I learned this. (more…)

Volcanoes fascinate me.  This is strange.

You see, I have not seen many volcanoes.  I have never seen a volcano erupt.  Although, I felt the wrath of Mt. Pinatubo when it erupted some years ago.

I was in college in Manila when Mt. Pinatubo, which is located outside of Manila, coughed out ashes that spread across the globe. At about 5:00 p.m., the sky darkened and it began raining ash. By 6:00 p.m., it was completely dark and everything was covered in a thick blanket of ash. By some miracle, my dad found me and took me home. We drove at a speed of about 2 kilometers per hour as our windshield was covered in ash and we could not see where we were going. Mt. Pinatubo buried several towns leaving many dead or homeless. Such was the effect of its fury.

Despite the danger that volcanoes pose and even if I never saw a volcano cough out lava or ash, I am drawn to them.

Before my trip to Indonesia, I have only seen four volcanoes, Mt. Mayon, Mt. Pinatubo, the Taal Volcano and Mt. Sto. Tomas.  So you can imagine what joy I felt when I saw not one, but seven volcanoes, while I was in Indonesia.  Even better, I saw five of them at one time.

I should not have been surprised by the number of volcanoes I saw in Indonesia since, according to this article,

“Indonesia leads the world in many volcano statistics. It has the largest number of historically active volcanoes (76), its total of 1171 dated eruptions is only narrowly exceeded by Japan’s 1274, and these two regions have combined to produce 1/3 of the known explosive eruptions. Indonesia has suffered the highest numbers of eruptions producing fatalities, damage to arable land, mudflows, tsunamis, domes, and pyroclastic flows (104, 186, 84, 13, 76, and 96, respectively). In the first five of these, Indonesia also leads other regions in the global proportion of eruptions with each characteristic.

Four-fifths of Indonesian volcanoes with dated eruptions have erupted in this century, and history shows the danger of volcanoes that have not erupted in recent centuries. Relatively few stratigraphic studies of older volcanic deposits have been completed in Indonesia, and only 0.5% of known Indonesian eruptions have been dated by other than historical techniques, emphasizing the need for more study of the prehistoric record in this region.”

But I was surprised.  More than that, I was awed and humbled by the strange sort of friendship that the Indonesian volcanoes have extended to me.