The Spirit of Kelimutu

Twelve hours on a bus followed by a night in a decrepit hotel and a 4am wakeup call may seem like the opposite of an indulgent vacation, but we considered it a fair price to pay in exchange for experiencing the evanescent moment in time when Indonesia’s quietly enchanted volcanic lakes supposedly come to life.

Legend has it the spiritual guardians of Mt. Kelimutu in Ende, Indonesia are granted the privilege of feeling alive on earth for a brief period every morning, for the amount of time it takes the sun to rise past the crest of Kelimutu’s volcanic peak.

It was our willingness to embrace the 30 hour journey from Labuan Bajo to the peak of Kelimutu for a mere three-minute climax that lead us to stumble upon a game changing revelation: turns out, it cost only $5 more to take a 40 minute round-trip plane ride from Labuan Bajo to Ende than it did to take the 12 hour bus, so the two of us packed a day bag with PJs, cash, toothbrushes, and cameras, and left the rest of our stuff at the hotel we were coming from and returning to, free of charge, relieved and thrilled to regain an entire day of our lives with this little fly-in/fly-out Indonesian adventure discovery.

The rest of the adventure fell into place with ease. Taxi’s don’t just wait around for travellers to visit Kelimutu since it’s such a quiet destination, so we made friends with a taxi driver during our two hour trip from the airport to our hotel near Kelimutu, where we arranged with him to pick us up again at 4am the next morning, trusting he would stick to his word; and he did.

We were the first two people to summit the volcano after a 50 minute hike in pitch black and flip flops – before any other tourists, and just barely before a local woman who made the same climb carrying a wicker basket of sugar cookies and creamer with a metal vat of kopi jahe balancing on top of her head, her daily gift to sunrise climbers in exchange for loose rupiah.

It was just her and us when the sun crested Kelimutu. She hummed and we stood still as could be, braced with heightened curiosity as to whether we would sense any type of spiritual activity during this fleeting moment of spiritual awakening; anything from a transient demonic possession to a glimpse of dashing opalescence, we were ready to witness it.

The only thing we saw was a twinkle in the eye of our only companion as she gestured towards three cups of ginger coffee and two empty seats on the bench beside her ;)