In Lab­huan­bajo quite a few people from the boat I came over with decided to pay a visit to Kelimutu and the three fam­ous colored crater lakes. As Toby and Louise, an eng­lish couple, needed to be back in Lab­huan­bajo soon to catch a flight to Bali, we decided on hir­ing a car. This is quite an expens­ive way of trav­el­ling, as it cost us 500.000 Rp a day. But since there were four people shar­ing the car the cost dropped down con­sid­er­ably. The fourth per­son to join our car was Karsten, a ger­man traveler.

On the first day we drove until Bajawa, prob­ably one of the most pleas­ant places I have been to. Sadly enough, we still had to drive on the next day. This was quite an unevent­ful jour­ney, until the other car trav­el­ling with us was involved in a little road­rage acci­dent. So we had to spend almost two hours wait­ing for the police. We spent this by sit­ting by the road­side play­ing cards, much to the amazement of the local chil­dren. This was prob­ably the most excit­ing thing that has happened in this little vil­lage for years.

We arrived in Moni, the start­ing point for all Kelimutu trips, short before sun­set. We had a few beers and went to bed early, because we had to get up early at 4 am. The next morn­ing we drove with our driver almost to the top. From the park­ing lot it was just another 20 minutes all the way to the top. When we got there all our hopes were dis­ap­poin­ted. We couldn’t see any­thing but clouds. We waited around for one and a half hours and decided to have break­fast and then come back!

The Black Lake

When people die it is said that their souls return to one of the lakes. This lake is set off a bit from the other two and appar­ently is reserved for the bad people of this world. That’s where the black color comes from. Con­sid­er­ing that the color is bound to change, though, I don’t really know what to make of this.

The Brown Lake

The guides told us this lake is ‘coca-cola’. At first we could only see brown, but when the sun star­ted to shine on it we could see what they meant. These guides told us as well, that the color of all the lakes can change fairly quickly due to min­er­als being dis­solved into the lakes dur­ing wet sea­son. This is the final rest­ing place for adult souls.

The Tur­quoise Lake

For me this was without a doubt the most impress­ive lake. The color is so vibrant and with streaks of yel­low in it that it doesn’t actu­ally look like water at all. This one is said to be for chil­dren. Kelimutu is sac­red to the people liv­ing in the area and I could eas­ily under­stand that. It’s a magical place!

On the drive down from Kelimutu I said my good­byes to every­body else, as they were driv­ing back to Lab­huan­bajo, and star­ted strolling down the hill…