Home of the Fruit Bat Text and photos by Brenna Lorenz East of Bali, in the Nusa Tenggara portion of the Indonesian archipelago, lies a tiny, uninhabited island offshore of Sumbawa, separated by a narrow strait from Tambora, the site of the largest and most devastating volcanic eruption in human history. Coming down the path from Satonda's cone, you can see Tambora's remains across the water. Satonda itself is a volcano, a small black basaltic cone rising out of the sea. You can land on its little beach, follow a trail to a cleft in the cone, and enter the volcano's caldera. The caldera contains a narrow strip of land surrounding a black, salty lake.
Trees grow inside, decorated with mysterious hanging stones over what appear to be graves.
The heat inside the caldera is terrible, because the walls of the cone block off all breezes. Rocks are tied to the branches of trees inside Satonda's caldera. Satonda's beach is remarkable because a major portion of its sediment consists of pebbles of pumice. Pumice is foamy volcanic glass, so light that it floats on water. As the waves lap in and out, the pumice portion of the beach washes in and out as well.