Matabunto Falls

On my previous trip to Sorowako in October Anto, Selvi and Tuti had taken me to Matabunto Falls. Well, this morning my friend Richard Jones (another Kiwi) invited me to join him and several others on a trip once again to the same falls. He assured me he would show me more than what I had experienced during my first visit. And he delivered!

We drove out in Richards truck and met up with Mike (an IT consultant from Arizona) and a couple of his lady friends (their names unfortunately I do not remember). The falls are accessed by a dirt track from the village of Wasupunda. Unlike my previous trip we walked the last few hundred metres as the road is very rough and rutted. Along the way we passed a grove of Cocoa trees and I remembered Leonard asking me what the cocoa tree looks like so, I took a picture!

The cocoa trees have broad, ovate leaves and the cocoa pods grow from just about anywhere on the tree such as the trunk and from branches. Once ripe (they turn yellow and then dark red) the locals pick the pods, remove the beans from inside, dry them and then sell. It is one of the local cash crops found around here.

Matabunto Falls is the result of a small river flowing over the edge of a limestone escarpment and forms series of cascades. What makes them especially interesting is that there is a lot of travertine (calcium carbonate) that has coated the rocks and even tree parts at least 6 inches thick. In many places the travertine has formed walls that now have dammed the stream to form small pools and has enhanced the cascade effect.

To the left is a picture of Richard standing in front of one set of cascades (I don't know why he has his eyes shut!) holding a bunch of bananas he bought from a vendor at the bottom of the stairs that give access to the lower half of the falls.

And here is Mike and his lady friends enjoying the cooling effects of the water!

Here I am standing on a wall of travertine. The one behind me has created a fairly deep pool behind it about as deep as the travertine wall is high.

In a couple of places, to aid people to climb up beside the falls, someone have carved footholds in the travertine.

And finally another group of visitors in front of the tallest cascade of the falls. I noticed too another difference from my previous visit a couple of months now is that entrepreneurship is alive and well in Indonesia with several small kiosks present where you can buy drinks and fruit from the locals. Now if they would fix up the road I'm sure they will be able to get far more visitors, although there were quite a few there by the time be decided to leave!