We left the hotel at 5am for a three hour ride up the mountain side. Halik inquired whether we liked music and upon finding that we did, popped in a "80s cheesiest hits" tape that mostly consisted on Celine Dion. Painful way to start the day when you haven't even had any coffee. 
The walk starts 3 steep kilometers below the crater rim of the Ijen volcano. It was cloudy and we weren't expecting to see anything but just as we reached the crater rim, the clouds cleared and we got the most amazing view of the smoking vents and turquoise blue lake in the crater.
In East Java, Indonesia lies Kawah Ijen volcano, 2,600 meters tall (8,660ft), topped with a large caldera and a 200-meter-deep lake of sulfuric acid. The active volcano emits gases through fumaroles inside the crater, and local miners have tapped those gases to earn a living. Stone and ceramic pipes cap the fumaroles, and inside, the sulfur condenses into a molten red liquid, dripping back down and solidifying into pure sulfur. Miners hack chunks off with steel bars, braving extremely dangerous gases and liquids with minimal protection, then load up as much as they can carry for the several kilometers to the weighing station. Loads can weigh from 45 to 90kg (100 - 200 lbs), and a single miner might make as many as two or three trips in a day. At the end of a long day, miners take home approximately Rp50,000 ($5.00 u.s.). The sulfur is then used for vulcanizing rubber, bleaching sugar and other industrial processes nearby.
We bribed one of the guys with a pack of cigarettes (they all smoke like chimneys) to let Jeff try out his basket. He had a bruise on his shoulder for days.
In one of Yellowstone National Park’s hot springs lives a type of bacterium called Thermus brockianus, which produces an enzyme that can make industrial bleaching cheaper and more environmentally friendly.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.inl.gov/research/ultrastable-catalase-enzyme/