Visiting the Kelimutu National Park, Indonesia

Hello Steemians,

In this post I will talk about the Kelimutu National Park in Flores, Indonesia.

The park is named after the Kelimutu volcano, and is famous for the three crater lakes in its caldera, the Kelimutu Lakes, which occasionally change their colour. Between January and November 2016 for example, the colours of the lakes reputedly changed six times (1).

Image from http://2.bp.blogspot.com

When I visited in 2010, two of the lakes had greenish colour, and one had a very dark blue. As you can see from the picture at the entrance of the park, this wasn't the case a few years ago.

In the next picture I took you can see "Tiwu Nuwamuri Koofai" (Lake of Young Men and Maidens) in the foreground, and "Tiwu Ata Polo" (Bewitched or Enchanted Lake) in the background.

Tiwu Nuwamuri Koofai (foreground), Tiwu Ata Polo (background)

And in the next two pictures, the "Tiwu Ata Bupu" (Lake of Old People), situated away from the other two.

Tiwu Ata Bupu

So how come these three lakes have different colous, that change independently?

Science tells us that this is due to two reasons;
a)The colours of the lakes are affected by the volcanic gas input, which varies over time, and the abundance of different major elements, such as iron and manganese,
b)Each lake is independently connected to the underlying volcano's activity.

In ancient times, the indigenous people deified the lakes. They believed that the spirits of the people when they died came here, and that they would enter different lakes according to their age and characters when they were alive.

The young people's spirits would enter the Tiwu Nuwamuri Koofai, the old people's spirits would enter the Tiwu Ata Bupu, and the bad people's spirits would enter the Tiwu Ata Polo, presumably regardless of age.