Powerful Volcano’s Offspring Makes Explosive Presence Felt

In an ancient cycle of death and rebirth, the offspring of a legendary volcano is growing at the spot where its parent was destroyed in the most cataclysmic natural event in recorded history -- and becoming a magnet for adventure tourists from around the world.

The volcanic eruption on Aug. 27, 1883, that blew apart the island of Krakatau in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra produced modern history’s most powerful explosion -- 30 times stronger than the largest thermonuclear bomb.

The blast was heard in Australia and Burma, thousands of miles from Krakatau, which is also known as Krakatoa. The ash and rock blasted into the air circled the globe for a year, and the Earth’s weather patterns were disrupted for several years.

A 130-foot-tall tsunami inundated about 100 villages on both sides of the busy waterway, killing an estimated 37,000 people. Until recently, the rusting hulk of a Dutch warship could be seen 2 1/2 miles inland on a hillside where the wave deposited it.

For decades, all that marked the site of the original 2,640-foot-high island was a tiny islet, renamed Rakata, that had survived the explosion. But in 1930, a new volcano -- Anak Krakatau, or the Child of Krakatau -- broke through the water at the center of the old volcano, where the tectonic forces that led to the 1883 eruption are pushing magma upward at an astounding pace.

The Child of Krakatau is now growing five yards a year, said Mas Aceh of Indonesia’s Directorate of Volcanology and Geology. It has already reached a height of nearly 1,320 feet.

“This must be one of the most dramatic spots on Earth, with all the most powerful forces in nature beneath our feet,” said Heinz Phelps of Germany. He and two friends were climbing from the tropical forest that has reclaimed the narrow coastal plain on Anak’s northern side, up through the black basalt foothills to the volcano’s cinder rim.

During active periods, Anak Krakatau erupts 20 to 30 times a day, sending up sulfurous smoke, and raining ash and molten rocks into the sea. At such times, the island, now a national park, is closed to tourists.

Even when Anak Krakatau is dormant, the difficult hike up the steamy, sun-scorched slope to the crater is discouraged by local guides since an American tourist was killed and five were injured by a 1993 eruption.

But fascinated travelers continue to come, drawn by history, drama and danger.

“There’s something very sinister about this place,” said William Redgrave of Australia. “A sunny tropical paradise with green islands surrounded by aquamarine waters, all sitting atop a giant time bomb.”

Most Indonesians prefer to watch the pyrotechnics from one of the hotels that line the beaches around the port town of Anyer on the western tip of Java.

It is easy to hire a boat there for the 18-mile ride across the turbulent waters to the three-island archipelago encircling Anak Krakatau. Powerboats shoot across the strait in about two hours; slower vessels make the trip in three to five hours, depending on how rough the sea is.

“We still take tourists over even when there is fire and smoke coming out of Anak, but we charge a little more,” said Sharoni, a sailor and guide on one of the tourist boats.

Two other popular jumping-off spots are Carita Beach and Tanjung Lesung, both just south of Anyer.

Tanjung Lesung is an attractive option for travelers with a bit more time to spend exploring. It is close to the 297,880-acre Ujung Kulon National Park, which is home to the one-horned Javan rhinoceros, one of the rarest animals on Earth.

The Sunda Strait sits just north of the Java trench, a geologically volatile zone where the Australian oceanic plate moves ward and plunges beneath the Asian continent, creating the network of volcanoes that gave birth to many of the islands in the vast Indonesian archipelago.

Geologists predict that Anak will continue growing for several centuries and eventually be vaporized in another colossal eruption similar to the one in 1883 and a previous megablast believed to have occurred on the same spot in A.D. 416. That volcano -- referred to by scientists as proto-Krakatau -- once connected Sumatra and Java. When it exploded, it created the Sunda Strait and left a ring of smaller islands, including Krakatau.

In the 1970s, Anak began attracting scientists eager to study volcanic activity and the development of plant and animal life.

Broader public interest has been stoked by a recent best seller -- “Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded” by British writer Simon Winchester, a comprehensive account of the 1883 eruption.

Winchester noted that geological evidence from around the world indicated that there had been half a dozen more devastating volcanic eruptions in the planet’s geological history.

But the 1883 explosion was quickly reported throughout the world because of the advent of the telegraph and undersea cables.

The unprecedented catastrophe and the failure of Indonesia’s Dutch colonial masters to provide relief had immediate effect. They were key elements in the rise of militant Indonesian nationalism, which by 1949 threw off foreign rule.

The clouds of ash thrown high into the atmosphere also produced phenomena unseen until then in night skies -- including crimson sunsets and rare shining clouds, formed from ice and ash particles.

Artists of the day recorded the spectacle in numerous paintings. The haunting, swirling celestial glow in Norwegian artist Edvard Munch’s famous 1884 painting “The Scream” is now believed by some to have depicted Scandinavian skies after Krakatau’s demise.