A Volcano Erupts

 

---

 

It felt like a particularly early 7am at the Bali airport, and we were listlessly shouldering our big bags after unloading them from the trunk of our taxi. A hopeful Indonesian man walked up to us and asked, “Taxi?” …really? We had just arrived at the airport. Did he want to drive us all the way to Bangkok? Picking up the rest of our bags, we barely looked at the guy, “We just got here, no we don’t need a taxi.” “Yes, but the airport is closed, and, yes,” nodding at our ridiculous load of baggage, “ you do need a taxi.” He accompanied his words with another nod up towards the arrival-departure screen hanging over the airport entrance. When we looked up, all we saw was, “Cancel due to volcano, Cancel due to volcano, Cancel due to volcano…” Every single flight scrolled the same message. We looked down the entrance hall and the check-in area was sporting closed doors linked with a heavy lock and chain and a line of security guards. Maybe we did need a taxi…

 

That was Monday, the 27^th of November, 2017. At midnight, the Denpasar airport in Bali had fully closed in response to the pending eruption of its active volcano, Mt. Agung. 5 days earlier, the volcano had begun spewing clouds of ash, and by Sunday night, the activity had risen enough to force the Indonesian government to place a Level 4 warning on its activity, making an airport closure mandatory. Couple that with a wind shift bringing the ash cloud directly over the airport, and no one was getting in or out.

Though we didn’t receive official notice of our cancelled flight until a few hours after we left the barred airport, the closure was no surprise to us. The airport on Lombok, the island to the east of Bali, had been closed on and off for the past few days as winds brought the ash directly over it. We were well aware of at least the weather forecast for a wind shift, and we had even thought to check and make sure the airport was still open before heading over for our flight. But we’re not too good at early mornings, and remembering to check got lost in the stumbling haze of making it to the airport on time.

There were plenty of other people milling about the closed airport who also hadn’t checked (or been timely informed of a flight cancellation). The feeling there was distinctly one of dis-ease, as crowds of tourists came to understand that not only were they going to be late in returning to their homes and jobs, they were now trapped within proximity of an active volcano. As days of continued closure wore on, as more and more flights were missed, people got more and more frantic, though we had extracted ourselves from this scene long before that point. I only saw this state of things when reading the news. But I guess considering the death toll from the last time Agung erupted in 1963—reports say somewhere between 1000 and 1500 people—who could blame people for freaking out? On the flip side of that, though, who could blame the government for being prudent with their warning levels?

Their prudence had been even more evident a month before. Agung first started spewing some ash and sending out seismic tremors back in the middle of September. Tens of thousands of people were evacuated from a 12 km radius, and some spent weeks at evacuation shelters. When Agung did not deliver an eruption, but instead showed a gradual decrease in activity, the government dropped the volcano warning level, and everyone went home.

I was actually in Bali at the time that Agung first started showing signs of activity. I was trying to take a freediving course in Amed in the middle of September. But the school was fairly close to Agung, about 5 km away, and by the time I arrived in Bali from Lombok, they had dropped contact with me. I tried to get a ride the 3 hours out there, but no one seemed interested in moving towards the volcano. After no response from Amed, I assumed the school had closed, and abandoned the freediving course. My presence in Bali on November 27^th was actually because we had extended our stay in Indonesia so I could do the course (at the same, now open, school) and had just finished. So by the time we took our smug taxi driver’s car back to our hotel that Monday morning, it would seem that with the thwarted freediving course plus the thwarted flight, Agung had bested me not once, but twice.

 

But I never felt bested.   I don’t think you can really feel one-upped by a volcano, at least not when the stakes are as low as freediving and flying. Where’s the contest? Human versus mountain…? I have been forced to miss many flights due to weather, and somehow each of those situations made me feel as though I was being cheated. But this experience was different. I was being handed the privilege of sharing an island with an erupting volcano. On my list of cool-shit-that-might-never-again-happen-in-my-life, that was pretty high up.

The first time I was in Bali and denied the freediving course, I let the chance to see the volcano up close pass me by, too swayed by people telling me that NO ONE was going there. To be fair, the showing wasn’t that amazing anyway, there were more tremors than ash or lava. So this time, it seemed an unnecessary shame to miss it again. After all, we were stuck in Bali for another 2 days, that being the first flight the airline could get us on to Bangkok. There seemed two possible roads we could go down in the next 2 days: Option 1– sit around twiddling your thumbs in North Kuta, a wasteland of malls and movie theaters, waiting for a flight that may or may not happen depending on the whim of a volcano; or Option 2—go get closer to that volcano and see what the precursor to an eruption looks like. It was a no brainer.

That same Monday of being turned away from the airport, we stashed our shit at a hotel, rented a scooter, and began to head east. We were aiming for Pura Lempuyang Luhur, a string of temples up in the mountains just east of Agung. The classic Instagram photo taken from the outer gates of the middle temple is Agung framed by a towering stone gate.  We figured it could be a sweet spot to see that same volcano active. For 3 hours, we braved the passing torrential downpours of an Indonesian winter, donning rain gear and peeling it off only to don it again. We were rewarded with our first views of Agung from the highway, only about an hour outside of Denpasar. Towering over cornfields, its plume of smoke (traveling directly in the direction of the airport) was tall and distinct.   Many other people, locals and tourists alike, were pulled over on various shoulders, phones up, mouths hanging open.

Just before dark, we arrived at a hotel well past its prime. The woman who owned it looked surprised to see us. “Everyone has left,” she said. “All of my guests just picked up and left yesterday morning. Most even forgot to pay. My staff is gone too… I’m happy to see you guys.” We told her we were here to see the volcano, and she laughed. “Yep, I’m not going anywhere either.” She showed us a few rooms, each a bit musty and full of ants and their squiggly cohorts. Finally she led us to a large balconied room and said, “Well, since there’s no one else here, why don’t you just take the suite for the same price as the standard. You’ll like the view.” Sitting on the balcony, you could see Agung smoking away into the fading light of the dusk. And from the outdoor bathroom, there it was again, perfectly framed in the mirror as you brushed your teeth. “Perfect, we’ll take it.” “Great. Do you mind paying up front…?”

 

Early the next morning, we hopped on the bike and rode the winding green mountainous road up to the temple. Equipped with sarongs and camera, we climbed to the first temple, and its Insta-famous gateway. Unsurprisingly, we were far from the only people there. Professional photographers, mostly local, had tripods set up, others wandered around with their telephoto lenses and gradiated filters. And probably ten or so other tourists gathered around the iconic gate. We hung back and watched as set after set waited their turn to pose in the gate with the erupting volcano as backdrop. [*]

Once I moved my attention away from the picture takers and towards the pictures to be taken, it became an all-consuming task. You know how that goes: if something is beyond cool, beyond beautiful, you can’t take enough pictures of it because you never truly capture the entirety of the moment in the simulacra of a single frame or video. There’s a palpable feeling to the event that does not translate to simple image. Once closer, we saw that the billowing that we had seen from afar was actually a mix of dark, grey plumes of ash and big, fluffy, white mountains of steam. Occasionally, you could see the glow of orange reflected off those white clouds, evidence of the magma on the surface of the volcano. The expansion was fast enough to watch, a boiling, pulsing flow of activity.   But as you can imagine, the words don’t describe it either. There’s also an undercurrent of emotions riding along with the view: awe tinged with fear, appreciation, even reverence. The framing of Agung by the temple gates becomes obvious as a religious homage, a deference to its awesome power made evident as it roils into life just beyond the temple.

 

We spent hours with the volcano. Pictures, pause to watch, pictures, pause to reflect on our position and its explosion range, more pictures. But after awhile, the clouds began rolling in. First the base was covered, then gradually the cone, and finally, even the plumes of ash and steam were obscured by the gathering clouds. It was almost as if it had wasn’t even there, though only 10 miles away, on the verge of an explosion. And in losing sight of it, those emotions ebbed away as well. You know it’s there, you know exactly what it looks like. But if you can’t see it in front of your eyes, it’s almost as if it ceases being there.

We spent the rest of the morning hiking up to the next temple, 1700 steps up. We were joined by 2 worshippers, Wayan and Komang, come from Batur. It was a lush, quiet, winding way, wet, green, full of occasionally aggressive monkeys. Wayan explained to us that this temple, this high temple, was the second oldest in Bali, founded by an Indian man who claimed it as the holiest place on the island. He said that while other temples are rebuilt as they age, this one retains its originality, if simply because it is too hard to rebuild, being so high up. And in truth, the only other people we saw trekking up the steep steps were men and women in rags walking bags of concrete balanced on their heads up the 1700 stairs, getting paid by the truck load to deliver concrete to the top. This was the only way to bring material for repairs up the mountain.

 

Once we reached halfway, after being blessed at the mid-shrine, we all paused to look out at Agung. The clouds had momentarily opened and we could see it again, almost in full. Wayan said that he believed that we were in the safest place to witness its eruption. I knew it was only a personal conviction, his own belief in the holiness of this mountain, but something made me believe him. Perhaps it was my own desire to witness Agung explode, right then.  The experts had been predicting the eruption that day… maybe we would get lucky. To be standing on that holy mountain, only a few miles away with such a wide window gazing out, front row seats…

 

We waited a few minutes and proceeded up the staircase. After a while at the top amid various worshippers and fearless monkeys, Tucker and I began our long trip back to Kuta. Agung was once again socked in, and the trip back was without its hovering visage, fast and cloudy. The airport opened that evening, and our flight the next day miraculously went on as planned. In fact, I am writing from the airplane headed to Bangkok. And somehow, being one of the lucky whose departure from Bali was not fraught with frustration and fear, here I am, reveling in the gift Agung gave me when it kept me in its proximity a few extra days.

 

---

 

[*] There was a general trend: females remove temple-mandated shoulder cover to reveal athletic bra, remove shoes, stand in a sarong-flowing yoga pose in the gateway, get picture taken, move aside to let someone else have a turn, then when opportunity allows, repeat with different yoga pose. Some variation of pose occurred when the people were men or not yogis, but the removal of shoulder coverings (aka shirts) and shoes persisted, as did the train of people assuming their best poses.   I apologize if this sounds too critical. I was also part of the machine turning and churning up there at the temple, taking photos.   I just find it incongruous that sex (aka half-naked men and women in yoga poses) has to be part of a volcanic eruption and that it has to be staged on a religious site where it is not welcome by those to whom the site is sacred. I like sex as much as anyone… but it seems a little tasteless, right there, right then? Anyway…