Kelimutu
Interesting facts
- The lakes are extraordinarily acidic: readings have gone as low as about pH 0.5, far more acidic than lemon juice.
- Kelimutu's three crater lakes were pictured on the back of Indonesia's 5,000-rupiah banknote issued in 1992.
- Vents on the lake beds release sulphur dioxide, hydrogen sulphide and carbon dioxide, and the upwelling gas can be heard as a boiling sound.
- Heat from the volcano keeps the lakes warm, with water temperatures measured between about 21 and 30 °C depending on the lake and its activity.
- Whether a lake turns red, green or blue depends largely on its oxidation state and dissolved iron and manganese, balanced between volcanic gas and rainfall.
- Kelimutu's recorded eruptions are a phreatic eruption in 1865 and hydrothermal explosions in 1938 and 1968, the most recent activity.
- Every 14 August the Lio people hold a ceremony to feed the spirits of their ancestors, leaving pork, betel nut and rice on stones beside the lakes.
- The lakes drew outside attention after a Dutch military commander, B. van Suchtelen, noted them in 1915; a 1929 account by Y. Bouman made them better known.
- The volcano's summit reaches 1,639 metres and stretches about 2 km, flanked by the older cones of Kelido to the north and Kelibara to the south.
Why it is worth it
Kelimutu's three crater lakes sit almost side by side, separated in places by walls of rock only a few dozen metres wide, yet they routinely show completely different colors from one another — one might run turquoise while its neighbor sits black, or maroon, or milky white, and any of the three can shift color again within months. Locals and researchers have both been tracking these color changes for generations; measured shifts have occurred as often as several times within a single year, driven by changing concentrations of dissolved minerals and gases rising from the volcanic system beneath the lakebeds, which alter how each lake absorbs and reflects light as the chemistry evolves.
The local explanation for the phenomenon predates any chemistry. The Lio people who live around the volcano hold that each lake is a resting place for the souls of the dead, and the traditional belief assigns different lakes to different kinds of people: Tiwu Ata Mbupu, the Lake of Old People, receives souls of the elderly; Tiwu Nuwa Muri Koo Fai, the Lake of Young Men and Maidens, receives those who died young; and Tiwu Ata Polo — the name translates roughly to "Bewitched" or "Enchanted" Lake — is said to hold the souls of those who lived badly. A color change in any one lake is traditionally read as a sign involving the fate or mood of the souls held there, a living interpretive framework laid directly over a landscape that keeps producing genuinely strange, unexplainable-at-a-glance visual evidence to sustain it.
What makes the site more than a curiosity is the combination: this is one of the very few places on Earth where three adjacent crater lakes on the same small volcanic peak display independently different colors at the same time, a geological rarity that happens to sit directly underneath a centuries-old belief system built to explain exactly that.
Getting there
19 km from Ende. El Tari Airport (KOE) is about 256 km away.
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From the encyclopaedia
Kelimutu is a volcano close to the small town of Moni in central Flores island in Indonesia. It is around 50 km (31 mi) to the east of Ende, Indonesia, the capital of Ende regency in East Nusa Tenggara province. It has three volcanic crater lakes that differ in color. Tiwu Ata Mbupu, on the western side of the island is blue in color while Tiwu Nua Muri Kooh Tai and Tiwu Ata Polo are usually colors of green and red. These lakes shift color due to changes that occur within the geology and chemistry of the volcano.
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