How may days have I spent here? I have seriously no idea, but I was quite happy to finally made the move out of Bukkitingi. Well at the end it was been two things that kept me in this dull mountain city: (1) The band in my cafe. Sweet locals. Steadily changing band members. Fun playing. A bunch of guys. Friends that come together to enjoy themselves, music and time. (2) Problem since: finding peace and space enough to actually think about that the hell she was thinking about booking the ticket to Australia … and that flight was just right in front of me. In my thoughts were no room for further exploration.
But the city was draining. Draining me. The lake seemed close and easy to reach. With a taxi from the hostel to the doors of the next homestead right at the shores of the volcanic Maninjau Lake. There wasn't so much happening. Nice swims. Hot walks. Shit loads of fish. Fresh air. Food. A thunder and lightning night.
Some facts about the volcanic lake in the mid of Sumatra? Check out wiki than you are as clever and informed as me. It was pretty there, even if the conglumeration of houses can't be labled as a city or town. The main stuff was happening along the street surrounding the lake. After a while the stalls and shops and sceneries were reapiding itself. What a lot was going on at Maninjau was fish farming and that in such a big style, I ask myself who can eats all that fish?! Every former simple fisher has now infront of his house at the river a wooden construction for fish farming.
The water of the lake was quite nice. Never cold. Volcanic activity on the bottom. My skin liked the mineral but oxygen rich water of the lake. After the wild storm the sulpher in the lake rose, the fishes died. Like a silver carpet was the surface of the lake to times covered. Sun beams breaking into million sparkling pieces, reaching the silvery flake of one of the million belly up fishes. The now silent witness' of the forces of nature. Simple, true but brutal reality. ... and somehow to witness how everything ist inter changing is magical. The thunder from the heavens and the supher from the earth's core.
