Lombok mountains & volcano!

Gunung Rinjani is the first UNESCO geological park in Indonesia. Mt Rinjani is the second highest volcano in Indonesia and it's active! It last blew ash in 2010. Indonesia is in the "ring of fire" with many volcanoes. The landscape we saw today, near Mt Rinjani, was created over millions of years of cone-building and violent eruptions and erosion. I googled about cone-building volcanoes - because Mum asked if I knew what it meant. 

We drove for about 2 hours up and up and up, and still we didn't reach even the rim of Mt Rinjani. If you want to do that you have to trek for 2 days! But, we did see it peak through the clouds. 

This isn't Mt Rinjani!

neither is this!

Mosques are everywhere, of course, Lombok is mostly Muslim. Rul and Eddie (who are showing us around Lombok) sometimes go to the mosque when the call to prayer echoed through loudspeakers from the mosques. Rul explained that he only really does this during Ramadam. 

The higher altitude and rich volcanic soil makes the area a fertile place for agriculture.Strawberries, avocados, cherry tomatoes were some we saw. 

We went on a long trek around the foothills of Mt Rinjani. Mum reminded me of Alfred Russell Walace doing the same thing but without the comfort of hiking boots or a car waiting for us at the end. 

I'm going to write another post dedicated to Wallace because of his discovery from years and years exploring this area led him to come up with the same theory of evolution as Darwin. More later!


Back to Mt Rinjani. It was formed when either plates collided or moved and the magma from the mantle rose through the earth's crust through a main vent. Because Indonesia is on the ring of fire (where 90% of the world's earthquakes and volcanic eruptions happen) there are many in Indonesia (it's where there is subduction of the Eurasian, Pacific and Indo-Australian plates - where one plate goes under another one).

After thousands  and thousands of years the cone at the top collapses and it forms a caldera with a lake. There is a huge 50 square kilometre lake in Mt Rinjani's caldera. 

Obviously I didn't take the photo below of Mt Rinjani's caldera but this is it. The fresh water that flows from the lake provides plenty of water for the agriculture .. and the waterfalls we saw (above)