With another few days in Rantepao and the fascinating Tana Toraja area, I decided to just rent a motorcycle from Markus for my next day of touring. He was essential in finding and explaining the cultural displays of the area, but I thought it might be fun to be on my own to explore some of the mountain roads surrounding the valley. I also got a nice little motorcycle/scooter mix for about $6 for the day, a semi-automatic that required shifting but didn't have a clutch. The little 100cc scooter seemed like it would be fine, though the I was warned that the key sometimes falls out of the ignition while it is running, so Markus advised me to start the bike and then pull the key out and put it away in my pocket. The battery was also essentially dead, so I had to use the kick-starter every time, which wasn't a problem. I soon found out that it also meant the horn was either really weak or non-existent, which would have been very useful in this culture where a horn is used almost every minute on the road, when passing anything, avoiding an oncoming truck/bus/buffalo in your lane, etc.
I had a vague, hand-drawn map with me, and I headed up towards the mountains around the Northern side of the valley, winding back and forth and backtracking a bit before finding one of the main roads up the mountain, passing a few terraced, yellowing rice fields dotted with random boulders in between, revealing the granite bedrock of the region. I saw two small tourist minivans stopped along the side of one bend, so I decided to see what the attraction was. Without a scale on my map, I thought I still had a long way to go, but I spoke with the guide there and found out that I had already reached Deri, a small site of well-known graves carved into the massive boulders, along with a few baby graves in the neighboring trees. I watched one of the locals chipping away at the rock, creating a new cavern for one of the coffins, and then I soon moved on, as it turned out that I had already passed one of the tiny villages that I wanted to see. Just two minutes down the road, I noticed that something felt odd. While traveling, I am constantly checking to make sure that my wallet is still in my front pocket, but this time, my heart dropped, and I frantically felt around my pockets and couldn't find it. I stopped quickly and realized that I definitely didn't have it with me, and I knew exactly why. In an effort to keep the key safe, I was in the habit of starting the scooter and then putting the key into my zippered pocket on my shorts as I was going along the road. I also thought it would be safer to have my wallet in that zippered pocket, but it turns out that I forgot to zip the pocket back up after one of my many photo stops, so I knew my wallet must be somewhere on the road just behind me. I turned around in the middle of the road (Indonesian style), and slowly retraced the few kilometers back to Deri. Cruising along very slowly, my eyes scanned the ground, hoping to see a gray wallet against the black pavement. I was soon back at Deri, not having found the wallet, though I did see a local man with a tiny shop on the side of the road who was staring at me. I checked again where I had parked the scooter and then crept back down the road again, hoping I'd find it on my second time around. This time, I didn't see anything, but I stopped to ask the man if he happened to have seen anyone pick it up. Before I could even formulate the sentence in any sort of Indonesian, he pulled something out of his pocket, and sure enough, it was my wallet. Now I wasn't exactly sure if he was planning on trying to keep it, or if he would have tried to find the owner, but I was glad that I didn't have to wait to find out. I thanked him profusely and headed back out on my way, up the hill towards the top of the windy, narrow mountain roads, dodging pot holes and gravel spots along the way.
Soon I was in Batutumonga where I stopped at a tourist restaurant perched on the top of the hill with great views down to the Rantepao and the entire valley a few thousand feet below. I also saw a familiar guide from the first day when I was pricing my options, and I was quite impressed that he remembered me, since we only spoke for about five minutes. He recommended a few nearby places, and I was soon off again, making my next stop in Lokomata. Lokomata means Bull's Eye in Indonesian, and it refers to a massive, circular boulder that sits right off the main road that runs through the tiny set of houses in this minuscule village. Within the huge rock are about 60 graves, each carved with a small square opening leading to a slightly larger cavern inside where the bodies are stored. Bamboo ladders stand propped up against the rock, ready for the next grave to be built, adding to the collection. I walked around the area a little while longer and then decided to head back down the mountain towards Rantepao.
Passing through a one-street village, I noticed the potential for an incredible view just off the side of the road. I stopped the scooter and walked out to the edge of a large rock and found just what I was envisioning. Spread out before me was a massive, slightly terraced rice field, shining bright yellow and green in the sun, set against the perfect backdrop of a pure blue sky with some huge white clouds pushing their way through one side of the view. I simply admired the view, watching a few workers below collect the rice stalks and relax beneath the shade of the boulders poking out from the fertile volcanic soil. After a while, I headed back down the hill, taking the shorter, local road to get back. One person had told me that this was not really a road, though a few locals told me that I'd be completely fine on my motorcycle, so I decided to try it. At first, it wasn't so bad, a mix of pavement and rocks, along with a few potholes, but nothing that I couldn't handle. Then, I began to see the reason for some hesitation in recommending this road. As I headed downhill from the village of Pana to Tikala, just a tiny dotted road on my map, the road got very steep and much worse. In addition to a very steep grade, the large rocks left little room for any sort of smooth ride, so I slowed to a crawl and rolled down the hill, one leg out for balance and support, with the other foot pressed firmly on the foot brake and my hand tightly grasping the front brake and handlebars. Barely releasing the brake, I slowly inched down the hill, cutting from side to side to follow the semblance of a trail on this very bad road. I certainly didn't want to try to go back up, so I continued down, gripping as tightly as possible and keeping the bike just barely under control, sliding over rocks, dirt, gravel and the occasional piece of pavement. Eventually I made it down, about 20 minutes later, but I was literally sweating from riding a motorcycle downhill. I was just happy to have made it safely, and the rest of the ride was mostly uneventful, weaving in and out of rural traffic like a pro, skirting a few rice fields and buffalo along the way back into town.
(More traditional homes and rice barns in the mountains of Tana Toraja. Despite becoming a bit of a tourist attraction, this architecture is still practical and common.)
(This was basically a village on a grassy plain consisting of five houses and a little church. Unlike many parts of Indonesia, this area is mostly Christian, though it's obviously a mix of Christianity and the local animist religions. I guess the missionaries would take what they could get.)
(Lokomata - the Bull's Eye. Those are openings just large enough to insert the coffins into the huge rock, though the internal caverns open up a little bit, offering a more spacious resting place for the dead. Hopefully they appreciate it.)
(One of the churches between Batutumonga and Lokomata.)
(The beautiful rice field coming down the mountain from Lokomata. It's amazing how much of the manual labor in a process like cultivating rice is still done by hand here.)
(Same place, slight different view.)
(This is just after sweating my way down the steep, precarious hill. I guess it's a good thing that my scooter was small enough to be controlled while sliding down the road.)
(A final view of a half-cultivated rice field and some tongkonan just outside of Rantepao.)
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