Climbing an active volcano

I will do a bigger update on Yogyakarta later, when I have more time. One hint: thank god I had my swine flu shot...

I've done plenty of stupid things in my life, with my infamous adventure in a UHaul in Manhattan on the 4th of July probably near the top of the list, but this one may surpass that.

I'm about to climb an active volcano--Mt Merapi. How active? Yesterday at sunrise, you could clearly see steam coming off the top.

You might say, "wait Charlie, you've been to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, and walked to edge of the crater. This shouldn't be any different."

It is. Kilauea, like all the Hawaii Volcanoes, are shield volcanoes, which means that their eruptions are slow and steady. They aren't all that spectacular, and don't cause the same types of other mischief that other volcanoes cause, like pyroclastic flows (Remember the movie Dante's Peak when that cloud of superheated ash came down the mountain and obliterated everything in its path? That's a pyroclastic flow) and lahars (volcanic induced mudflows)

Merapi is a stratovolcano situated on a subduction zone, which means that it is pretty much identical to Mt St Helens and any other volcano in the Cascades, as well as just about every other volcano on the Pacific Ring of Fire, Mt Fuji and Mt Pinatubo included, in Washington, and is Indonesia's most active volcano. How active and troublesome? It was classified as one of the decade volcanoes by a scientific organization.

Fortunately, since it's 2006 spike of activity that resulted in an earthquake that did lots of damage to Yogyakarta, it's been comparatively quiet--and volcanoes don't usually erupt out of the blue--there are all sorts of seismic indicators that go off first.

I usually wouldn't have considered doing something like this, but my friend, who taught last year in Indonesia and did all sorts of travelling, recommended the climb to me, having done it herself with her brother. What gives her opinion even more credibility? She's been generally right about everything else so far (I would have crossed off going to Lake Toba, but she claimed it was one of her favorite places in Indonesia)--and she's been accepted into a Geology and Geophysics PhD program at a pretty highly respected university.

I should also note that I didn't know for sure that I would be climbing until about 515pm (its 530pm now)--and we leave at 1000pm to reach the top for the sunrise. I went to one tour agency, who said I needed another person this morning, checked back with them later this afternoon, they said I was SOL. I then went to another agency nearby, checked with them, they said that I could only do it tmw, so I decided to look into options for a daytrip to Solo. As I am walking back from the train station with the timetable to Solo, the tour agency guy sees me and tells me we are go for tonight.

So, that's that...