Day 3: Mt. Merapi

You may recall in the fall of of 2010 that Mount Merapi, a volcano here in Indonesia erupted multiple times. It caused all kinds of destruction and mayhem over a few weeks. Many people died, lost homes, cattle, and flights were cancelled all over South East Asia as well as delaying President Obama's trip for yet another time. I have never been anywhere near an active volcano before (that I know of), so I was very intrigued to go and see Mount Merapi while we were in Yogya. On the drive up, we saw a lot of green and trees, and I thought that it was weird because I was expecting a lot more devastation.

It really was green, green, green, trees, trees, trees, and then BAM....

The only way to describe how the area looked was like one giant pile of pick-up sticks. There were ruined houses, motorcycles with their tires melted off, and rusted cars...and everything was ash gray. It was very sad to think about how this natural disaster affected so many people and their families, and at the same time I was totally fascinated by the power of nature. The volcano was super cool looking...and it is still puffing out smoke (that's the technical term) out of its crater. The boys were fascinated by it because it was a real life volcano "just like the one in Backyardigans!" We actually got to talk to Clark about what the volcano did and how amazing it is, and also how sad it is because sometimes it destroys things like houses. He clearly understood and it was interesting to see him trying to figure it all out while we were walking around.

You get up to a certain spot and then they have a bunch of guys with motorcycles who will drive you up a little bit further closer to the base of the volcano. Of course we just HAD to do that, so Tanner actually drove one motorcycle with the boys and I hopped on another with Audrey and a driver. The thing that is interesting about the people in Yogya is that they are a very spiritual and also superstitious people. There has always been a spiritual gatekeeper that they believe 'communicates' with the volcano to help keep the people safe. He died during one of the first eruptions, and soon after, a new gatekeeper was appointed. There were people up there starting to rebuild houses and mosques, but this thing erupts every few years so I was kind of wondering what the point was, or why they don't go and build elsewhere. But I really think that many of them just have no other option.

Don't know if you can tell from looking at the picture, but this is an area that controls the river flow from the mountain down into the city. After Merapi blew, they had a number of rainy days and there was so much ash and water that it went right over the top of this dam/bridge and took out the guard rails (if you can even call them that) on either side of the road. Here we are 3 months after the fact and the water is still liquid ash. Yes, we had to drive across that bridge. awesome.
So there is a story behind this very cute picture of Andrew tush. While we were wandering the landscape surrounding Merapi, Andrew decided he just had to use the bathroom. There weren't any porta potties that we could see and in reality there weren't even any trees for him to hide behind, so we were kinda trying to decide what to do when this woman and her little boy saw us, and Tanner asked her if she knew of a place we could go. The next thing we knew she had this black pail that she filled with water and she guided us over to a toilet from one of the ruined houses. Tanner couldn't help taking a pic, and just fyi, you use the black pail of water to in effect flush the toilet by forcing water down the drain. The lady was so nice to help us, and she had been trying to sell some postcards and pictures before our bathroom emergency, but we really didn't need any of that stuff. While Clark and I were waiting in the car, I got some money out and asked Clark if he wanted to go and give the little boy some money so that he could help his mom rebuild their house and he got all excited. He hopped out of the car and ran over to the boy and gave it to him and the little boy was so cute and showed his mom excitedly and then folded up the money and proudly put it in his tiny little pocket in his shorts. When Clark came back to the car, he was so happy and he said "I gave him some money so now they can build their house again and be safe!"

Priceless.