After an arduous 20-hour busride from Bengkulu, through twisting mountain roads, I had finally made it down the entire length of the massive island of Sumatra. Just a few weeks earlier I was lounging on the beautiful beaches of Pulau Weh, the heavenly island with the unique distinction of being the furthest north in the Indonesian archipelago. And now my adventure was nearing its end - soon I'd be back in Jakarta, boarding an airliner to head home. But since I was here, at the southern tip of Sumatra, how could I resist the possibility of seeing the infamous Krakatoa volcano? Since gradeschool I'd heard the story of the volcano's explosive collapse in 1883 - a boom that echoed across distant lands, and a resulting tidal wave that swept ashore and killed an estimated 36,000 people living on Sumatra's southeastern coastal flats... And so here I was, enjoying a comfortable bed in my room at the Beringin hotel in Kalianda (after several nights of cramped sleep on crowded smokey busses), safely sheltered from the torrential tropical rain just outside.

There was one other traveller staying at the hotel, a nice German fellow called Bernt. He'd been waiting several days for someone else to materialize and help cut costs for a boat trip out to Anak Krakatau (anak = 'child', and Krakatau was how you said 'Krakatoa' in Indonesian). Only rp40,000 (about US$15) for a 2-day excursion, including food and tent! The next morning we promptly shoved off in a small outrigger boat, piloted by our guide Hassan, towards the smoking hill on the horizon. Hours went by in the sun, and as we drew closer it became apparent that it wasn't just smoking - every few minutes dark rooster tails of ash would shoot quickly up into the air, followed by a mushrooming ash cloud! You could see the rocks raining down, leaving a trail of dust in their wake as they rolled down the cone. Our boat was pointed straight for it, and I kept expecting Hassan to turn at any minute. But no! we landed right on the beach below the exploding mountain, Anak Krakatau, born in the 1920s and still a toddler at about 300m tall. The sky thundered and the ground shook below us, and we just stood there staring in a sort of dumb awe. It was quiet for a minute or two, then tremor, thick black jets of ash, a shower of rocks, sometimes accompanied by loud hissing or jetting noises, sometimes a loud boom, trailing off, and quiet again...

After about half an hour, I think Hassan started to get nervous, and it was time to leave. So we climbed back into his slow boat and went about a quarter mile away to one of the nearby islands, part of a ring of islands that used to form part of the base of the original volcano. I think ours was Pulau Lang, and it had a nice black sand beach backed by lush jungle. We made a quick shelter on the beach with some bamboo poles (left by previous excursions), a mat, and a tarp - front row seats for the incredible scene that was unfolding. The sun was setting, lighting up the sky and the ash clouds. As twilight approached, we began to see the incandescent glow of the rocks that were being ejected from the volcano's summit. We cooked up some rice and noodles on a portable stove, and Hassan disappeared into the trees. He returned a few minutes later with yet another surprise - large, live, meaty crabs! And so we sat and watched the volcanic action play out before us as we chowed on our delicious crab dinner. Indeed, it was an evening without comparison...

It did rain for about an hour, but other than that we were treated to an uninterrupted performance. I stayed up most of the night watching the action. It was fantastic. Glowing rocks were thrown into the air, seemingly higher again than the height of the cone itself. They sprayed out and came down with small crashing sounds on the ash, and sometimes there was so much that the entire mountain was glowing! That, accompanied by the lights of quiet fishing boats and the occasional strike of lightening, made for an indescribably beautiful scene. At times the booms from the volcano were so loud that the ground shook on our beach! Sometimes a single explosion, sometimes 2 or 3, and sometimes 10 or 15 seconds of continuous fountaining. Two added bonuses: no mosquitoes, and we finally got a decent look at comet Hale-Bopp.

Well, as the night progressed, I was thankful for the incredible luck we had in stumbling upon this scene. I didn't see anyone else around watching at night, so I can only assume that the Beringin hotel is one of a very few that offer an overnight trip such as this. I think I did get a couple hours' sleep, during which I awoke more than once to find crabs crawling across my chest and legs. We jumped up early to watch the sunrise - some of the best volcano viewing yet! We had a quick breakfast of rice and noodles, packed up, and jumped back in the boat by 7:00 a.m. I looked back and watched the smoking mountain shrink in the distance, incredibly satisfied by an unbelievable night. It was a slow, rough ride back against the wind, and we got thoroughly drenched. By 1:00 in the afternoon we were back in Kalianda. I bathed in the mandi, and enjoyed my last real Padang meal - a fantastic rendang ayam.