It’s challenging to take a well-travelled tourist by surprise with vibrant reservoirs. It appears that every colour in the spectrum would be reflected on the lakes’ water surfaces. The range of colours is infinite and includes tones of pink, carmine red, thick grey, boiling white, black, purple, and even yellow.
But from the long list of striking attractions, the lakes of the Kelimutu volcano, located on the island of Flores in Indonesia, stand out especially. These are coloured blots located in three calderas of one volcano. Two of them are separated by a thin stone lintel, and the third is located a little further away. Not only are bodies of water different in colour from each other, but they can also change it – sometimes slightly and sometimes very radically, for example, from sky blue to deep black. And this is not a trick of the light, as sometimes happens with the surface of the sea. This is the result of chemical processes constantly occurring in the rock mass.
However, tourists (and there are quite a lot of them here) are not in any danger from this. The three lakes of the Kelimutu volcano are located in basins with practically reciprocal walls, and the distance from their edges to the water surface is about 5 meters. The risk here is different – for the sake of spectacular shots, desperate travellers sometimes embark on reckless adventures, trying to get as close to the water as possible. Well, they pay for it with their lives. So, in 2015, a Dutch tourist fell into Lake Sorcerers. They tried to search for his body but did it without much diligence since the Ph level of the reservoir was 0.5 units, and this approximately corresponds to the acidity of the electrolyte in the battery. In addition, the caldera goes down an impressive 800 meters, so any rescue operations here are pointless.
In order to prevent accidents, the authorities of Kelimutu National Park have installed iron fences and equipped platforms from which all three lakes can be safely viewed. And still, there are those who climb over the railings and pose against the backdrop of black, red and green water.
The bridge between the lakes is gradually becoming thinner/ © travelask.ru
But it is still far away, and the lakes of the Kelimutu volcano continue to attract tourists who want to see the rainbow palette of unusual bodies of water, admire the poisonous fog and listen to local legends.