Update : Tourism in Java’s Land of Ghosts

Written By Unknown on Selasa, 09 April 2013 | 17.35

Adek Berry/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Tourists visit Mount Merapi in Indonesia.

As we neared the top, a monotone world surrounded us. The thickening fog stitched gray rocks to the sky. Piles of volcanic ash sat, untrammeled, in driveways, as innocuous as autumn leaves. The narrow road snaked ever upward, passing emergency shelters and informal checkpoints.

I was on Mount Merapi, whose active volcano dominates the horizon outside Yogyakarta, in central Java, Indonesia. My wife and I were visiting the country and had heard about the effort to transform the mountain into an unlikely tourist attraction since a 2010 eruption killed more than 300 villagers and forced over 100,000 to evacuate their homes and farms, and to abandon jobs in sand mining.

The only souls here were a surfeit of guides and visitors like us, driving up the mountain as far as our rented sedan would go.

That turned out to be about a mile from the peak, where a gravel lot was surrounded by modest wooden stalls selling phone cards, sweet ginger tea and cigarettes. More than a dozen drab Willys Jeeps, a World War II-era precursor of today's brand, sat ready. Because no formal roads went beyond the lot, we would need a Jeep, and a guide, to go any higher.

We enlisted a serene 30-year-old Javanese man from Yogyakarta named Christian Ignasius, who in the three years since the eruption has organized its tourism infrastructure: a shoestring operation in which 25 guides lead tourists on off-road treks to see what were once their vibrant villages. Money from the tours ($25 to $45, depending on length) is divided among drivers, their villages, widows and the poor, and the cooperative to which they belong. They call it the Merapi Jeep Tour Community. It is the latest of the ever-growing number of places hoping to gain from their loss by marketing themselves as destinations for disaster tourism.

We climbed in the seat-belt-free Jeep, and Christian took the wheel, cutting a precarious path through boulders left behind by pyroclastic flows from the eruption. Gears grinding, wheels spinning, the Jeep creaked through the fog, finding just enough traction to climb the massive mounds of rubble that had been violently tossed around us. We lurched atop what he estimated was 30 feet of debris.

Our first stop was a yellow sign warning: "Asap panas," Bahasa Indonesia for "hot air." Christian led us to a circle of rocks in what had been a riverbed beside a farming village just two years earlier.

As we looked around, it was easy to imagine the lush, bucolic life. A few miles downslope, verdant fields were still being tended. But here, when we dug into the ground, the gray, gravelly sand was hot and smelled of sulfur. I threw a football-size rock, and the thud from its landing produced a hollow echo rising from below. There was not enough water or vegetation to dampen the sound.

"There are a lot of ghosts here," Christian said.

He has been a refugee himself. He worked in Banda Aceh, on Sumatra, after the December 2004 tsunami killed an estimated 170,000 there, returning to Yogyakarta after his own home was destroyed in a 2006 earthquake. When Merapi erupted, he helped restore a supply of clean water and continued volunteering with the recovery effort for two years.

As throngs of curious tourists from Indonesia and across the world began arriving in 2011 to see the damage, Christian realized that they could support local jobs. And so, for $1,500, he bought his 1948 Willys Jeep and hired three drivers. Now the tours have become so popular, hosting nearly 1,000 visitors a month, that new drivers are chosen by lottery.

Although Christian took us up, he doesn't usually serve as a driver. But he introduced us to several, including Tri Triono, a quiet 33-year-old who used to raise dairy cows. He sold all 12 when they fell sick after an early eruption, a forerunner of the blast that destroyed his family's home.

Two years later, he's still living in a temporary house the government built in an anonymous cut of jungle. He can't move back home, but he drives tourists past its shell. His new work is easier and better paying than raising cows, Tri said, but constantly revisiting the land where his family lived for generations ("since before it was called Indonesia") weighs on him.


Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang

Update : Tourism in Java’s Land of Ghosts

Dengan url

http://travelwisatawan.blogspot.com/2013/04/update-tourism-in-javaas-land-of-ghosts_9.html

Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya

Update : Tourism in Java’s Land of Ghosts

namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link

Update : Tourism in Java’s Land of Ghosts

sebagai sumbernya

0 komentar:

Posting Komentar

techieblogger.com Techie Blogger Techie Blogger