Adventure seekers drawn to 'child' of Krakatau

Adventure seekers drawn to 'child' of Krakatau

Slobodan Lekic, Associated Press, Anak Krakatau, Banten

In an ancient cycle of death and rebirth, the offspring of a legendary volcano is now growing at the spot where its parent was destroyed in the most cataclysmic natural event in recorded history -- and becoming a magnet for adventure tourists from around the world.

The volcanic eruption on Aug. 27, 1883, that blew apart the island of Krakatau in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra produced modern history's most powerful explosion -- 30 times stronger than the largest thermonuclear bomb.

The blast was heard in Australia and Myanmar, thousands of kilometers from Krakatau, the island also known to many as Krakatoa. The ash and rock that blew into the air circled the globe for a year, and the earth's weather patterns were disrupted for several years.

A 40-meter tsunami inundated some 100 villages on both sides of the busy waterway, killing an estimated 37,000 people. Until recently, the rusting hulk of a Dutch warship could be seen four kilometers inland on a hillside where the tidal wave deposited it.

For decades, all that marked the site of the original 800- meter-high island was a tiny islet, renamed Rakata, that had survived the explosion.

But in 1930, a new volcano appropriately named Anak Krakatau - the Child of Krakatau -- broke the surface of the water at the center of the old volcano, where the same tectonic forces that caused the 1883 eruption are pushing it upward at an astounding pace.

The Child of Krakatau is now growing five meters a year, according to Mas Aceh of the Directorate of Volcanology and Geology. It has already reached a height of nearly 400 meters.

"This must be one of the most dramatic spots on earth, with all the most powerful forces in nature beneath our feet," said Heinz Phelps, of Munster, Germany.

He and two friends were climbing from the tropical forest that has reclaimed the narrow coastal plain on Anak's northern side, up through the black basalt foothills to the cinder cone that forms the rim of the baby volcano.

During active periods, Anak Krakatau erupts 20-30 times a day, sending up sulfurous smoke and raining ash and molten rocks down the hillsides into the sea. At such times, the entire island, now a national park, is off-limits to tourists.

Even when it is dormant, the difficult hike up the steamy, sun-scorched slope to the crater is discouraged by local guides, since an American tourist was killed and five injured by a 1993 eruption.

But fascinated travelers continue to come, drawn by the history, drama and the danger of this volcano.

"There's something very sinister about this place," said William Redgrave, an Australian tourist. "A sunny tropical paradise with green islands surrounded by aquamarine waters, all sitting atop a giant time bomb."

Most Indonesians prefer to watch the frequent pyrotechnics from one of the hotels which line the beaches around the port town of Anyer on the western tip of Java.

It is easy to hire a boat from there for the 30-kilometer ride across the turbulent waters to the three-island archipelago which encircles Anak Krakatau.

Powerboats shoot across the straits in about two hours; slower vessels make the trip in three to five hours, depending on how rough the seas are.

"We still take tourists over even when there is fire and smoke coming out of Anak, but we charge a little more," said Sharoni, a sailor and guide from one of the tourist boats plying the route.

Two other popular jumping-off spots are Carita Beach and Tanjung Lesung, both just south of Anyer.

Tanjung Lesung is an attractive option for travelers with a bit more time to spend exploring, as it is also close to the 120,550-hectare Ujung Kulon National Park which is home to the one-horned Javan rhinoceros, one of the rarest animals on earth.

The Sunda Strait sits just north of the Java trench, a geologically volatile zone where the Australian oceanic plate is moving northward and plunging beneath the Asian continent, creating the network of volcanoes that gave birth to many of the islands in the vast Indonesian archipelago.

Geologists predict that Anak will continue growing over the next several centuries and eventually be vaporized in another colossal eruption similar to the one in 1883, and a previous megablast believed to have occurred on the same spot in 416 A.D. That volcano -- referred to by scientists as proto-Krakatau -- once connected Sumatra and Java. When it exploded, it created the Sunda Strait and left a ring of smaller islands, including the original Krakatau.

Underground seismographs buried on Anak have recorded thousands of eruptions and quakes in the past three decades.

After decades of relative obscurity, in the 1970s Anak began attracting scientists anxious to study volcanic activity, and the development of plant and animal life.

Broader public interest has been stoked by a recent best seller, Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded by British writer Simon Winchester, a comprehensive account of the 1883 eruption.

In his book, Winchester noted that geological evidence from around the world indicates that there have been half a dozen more devastating volcanic eruptions in the planet's geological history.

But the 1883 explosion was quickly reported throughout the world because of the advent of the telegraph and undersea cables -- producing the first true global news event. The previous blasts were lost to antiquity and had little or no impact on human society, Winchester says.

The unprecedented catastrophe of Krakatau and the failure of Indonesia's Dutch colonial masters to provide relief aid had immediate effect. They were key elements in the rise of militant Indonesian nationalism, which by 1949 threw off the yoke of foreign rule.

The clouds of ash thrown high into the atmosphere also produced phenomena unseen until then in night skies -- including crimson sunsets and rare shining clouds, formed from ice and ash particles.

Artists of the day recorded the spectacle in numerous paintings. Among them, the haunting, swirling celestial glow in Norwegian artist Edvard Munch's famous 1884 painting The Scream is now believed to have depicted Scandinavian skies as they were in the aftermath of Krakatau's demise.