Moni, Flores. Indonesia
Outside of the village of Moni on Flores Island, there is a volcano called Kelimutu with three multi-colored crater lakes in it. We went on a crisp morning and were lucky because the overnight rain had cleared and the clouds rolled away in the light breeze. We hopped on the back of two ojeks (motor bikes) and were driven up the mountain to the entrance gate by men who didn’t speak any English and who smelled like a mixture of cologne, clove cigarettes, and questionable breath.
It’s a short hike up to the rim of the crater to view the lakes. One is turquoise blue, one turquoise green, a color so deep it looked like paint, like the light couldn’t penetrate its depths. The other was a deep emerald green. This is a sacred place for locals, where souls go when they die, age determining which lake you end up in. On the way up, some rabbits hopped by. Or were those small dogs? No wait, MONKEYS! Long-tailed macaques to be exact. We followed them for a bit, snapping photos as they looked for food under bushes and inside of plastic bags. I begged to take one home.
We had the place mostly to ourselves but, as we were leaving, a fair number of local tourists showed up, enjoying the craters. The craters weren’t the only thing that interested them that day though. At the summit, two guys approached Brian and asked if they could have their photo taken with him. So, I snapped the photo – first with their camera, then with ours.
On our way back down the mountain, a large group of local tourists were coming up to the viewpoint. They held their phones up, taking quick photos of us as we passed. One man came up to me, stopping me in my tracks and said, “Hello. I am disturbed. I am photo you?”
The excitement of the day was in our spotting the monkeys and getting to see a primate that we don’t usually see. For the local, however, there was a different primate that they don’t usually see. Here, we are the monkeys.
