Lorre Weidlich -- Hyde Park Foreign Affairs Desk

This is the latest in an on-going series of reports by Hyde Park's well traveled friend and neighbor, Lorre Weidlich.

By far the most distinguishing geographical feature of Indonesia is its volcanoes. As I flew into Bali, the plane had barely crossed the coastline of the island when I saw, rising from an apparently flat plain, a black cone. My first volcano!     Several days later, while touring the island, I had lunch at Kintamani in the eastern highland area of the island. The view of Gunung Batur towering over its crater lake, with black clouds clustered around its top, was awesome. A close encounter with a volcano was definitely going to be part of my Indonesia experience, but it waited until I moved on from Bali to Java. There I had arranged several days in the city of Malang, only a two-hour drive from Bromo-Tengger-Semeru National Park.     At the hotel I talked to the people at the reception desk about arranging a trip to Gunung Bromo. The hotel staff seemed unfamiliar with tourists who wanted to climb volcanoes, but the tour agent they contacted understood exactly what I had in mind. Apparently, sunrise is the best time to view the volcanic landscape, before clouds obscure anything, so at 2 am I was waiting in the lobby for my driver to pick me up for the two-hour trip.

Bromo-Tengger-Semeru National Park consists of a huge volcanic crater (Tengger crater), at least 10 kilometers across, filled with black volcanic sand. From this sea of sand rise several cones, including Gunung Bromo and Gunung Semeru, Java's tallest volcano. Both are active.     The car climbed to the highest point of the Tengger crater, and I waited there (with 50 or so other early risers) for the sun to rise. Even in the dark, the smoke rising from Gunung Semeru could be seen, and some people saw flashes of fire as well. When the sun rose, it revealed a landscape that was almost otherworldly -- a series of cones, several of them smoking, in a lava sand sea.     This was only the beginning of the adventure. We descended down to the sea of volcanic sand and made our way across it. At the base of Gunung Bromo, there was a Hindu temple and men with horses. I hired a horse to take me farther across the sand and up the slope. For the last part of the climb, actual steps (about 250 of them) have been built up to the top of the crater. Because of the altitude and resulting thinness of the air, the climb was surprisingly difficult. The sulfurous gas emitted by the volcano burned my lungs. At the top of the volcano, there is only a thin edge for walking, and just as the outside of the cone slopes almost straight down, so does the crater on the inside. I crept to the edge and saw the smoke rise from its opening. This was a power not to be taken lightly. Continued on page 15