Indonesia. Beautiful, wild, still
welcoming. It has captivating natural scenery for every kind of
pleasure and adventure seeker: beaches, jungles, volcanoes. Due to
its location on a number of tectonic plates, it's also prone to
natural disasters, particularly of the earthquake and volcanic
variety. Maybe it's this capricious unpredictability of Mother
Nature that prevents a gross influx of tourists. Or it may be the
sheer vastness of the country that diffuses the waves that might
otherwise be here. Fine and dandy with us. I'm excepting Bali, of
course.
We started in Sumatra. We flew into
Banda Aceh, the most northwest city of Indonesia in the Islamic
Sharia-ruled province of Aceh (you know conservative Sharia law, of
the steal and lose a hand sort?). In December of 2004, it was
devastated by the Boxing Day earthquake and the ensuing tsunami,
which claimed and injured hundreds of thousands of people just in the
city itself. International aid relief poured in, but some of the
damage is noticeable till this day. From a conversation with a
visiting medical student and a local diver master, we gleaned some
insight into the ineffectiveness of the local emergency response.
Add in corruption, and the lack of complete restructuring is not
surprising.
We didn't dabble in Banda Aceh, but
instead took a slow ferry, packed in tight with people, supplies and
vehicles, to neighboring Pulau (island) Weh, known mostly for its
pristine underwater wonders. For a week, we rented a bungalow in
Iboih that was perched right over rocks that crawled with crabs
during the day, only to be pounded by the crashing waves of a high
tide at night. Though there were no real beaches, the clear, azure
waters of the Andaman Sea and the coral teeming with life beckoned,
right from our front porch. Snorkeling was the name of the game.
Fish were abundant, in an array of colors matching the rainbow, from
cute clownfish (think Nemo) to meter-long groupers. There were plenty of moray
eels, octopi, schools of ink-spurting squid, even the deadly
lionfish. Pawel also went diving, though he intended to do a cave
dive, which seemed a bit too claustrophobic for me. We signed up for
dives the next day, only to wake up with stuffed noses and sore
throats. No diving for us for now.
Our main purpose on the island
obliterated for the time being, we decided to move on to Bukit Lawang
for some jungle trekking amid the rare wild orangutans.
Indonesian version of a tuk tuk
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