Maninjau

Danau Maninjau

We took a speedy shared taxi from Bukittingi to a quiet retreat to a cabin on Danau Maninjau (Lake Maninjau). It is a crater lake with the near circular rim wrapping round all sides. We had to descend the rim (44 switchbacks!) to get to our cabin in the small village of Maninjau. We found that the crater rim seemed to fend off the storm clouds, and provided an amazing backdrop for sunsets. Our cabin was in the busiest part of the lake, which is not saying much because the whole lake was rather quiet. We imagined that this would probably be the most isolated (least touristy) stay in our big trip.

Although there were some issues with the cabin, we enjoyed the quiet and isolation. The lake is not really for swimming, but Asa enjoyed playing in the water and throwing stones. Fishing nets and fish cages for farming were seen everywhere. At some point we heard the lake had become over-polluted (probably from too much fish farming and motorboats), but as far as we could tell it was starting to recover.

Typical lunch plates in Sumatra

Food options were limited but mostly quite cheap. Although there were standard Indonesian dishes to be found (nasi goreng and mee goreng), West Sumatra is famous throughout Indonesia as the home of rendang, a spicy-sweet meat dish (usually beef, sometimes chicken) which is made by basically adding a bunch of spices and seasoning to a simmering pot of meat and you simmer over several hours until there is almost no liquid left. The meat becomes quite tender and almost preserved so that (evidently) it can be eaten over several days. I really grew to enjoy the distinct flavor, that I can’t quite recall having outside Indonesia, though it was sometimes too spicy for Kanako and Asa.

Martabak, mmm

The other food highlight was martabak, which we bought freshly made at the local markets. The word comes from the Arabic word for “fold” or “folded”, and has many variations throughout Indonesia and the Muslim world. The version in Sumatra seems to be a large fluffy pancake covered with sweet stuff (peanuts, coconut rice, chocolate sprinkles, etc.), then folded like a taco and cut into pieces. Mmmmm.

On our last day in Maninjau we were in an adventurous mood and took a motorbike to try for a short hike partway up the crater rim to a waterfall. We saw a giant millipede, and at the time I thought it might be a centipede, but I’m pretty sure it was a giant flat-backed millipede — about 20 cm long, and I was sad that I couldn’t get a good photo of it. The hiking path was not so clear, too difficult for Asa to get all the way to waterfall, so I trekked up the last 200m to the base of the waterfall, with an eerie feeling that the jungle was bearing down on me. Right when I made it back to Asa and Kanako, Asa fell forward hands-first into a small patch of some poisonous plant, which made for an unpleasant hike down. Luckily, an hour later he was fine.

An imposing caterpillar from our waterfall hike