Monday 30 June 2014
The Ijen volcano complex is a group of stratovolcanoes in the Banyuwangi Regency of East Java, Indonesia. It is inside a larger caldera Ijen, which is about 20 kilometers wide. The Gunung Merapi stratovolcano is the highest point of that complex. The name of this volcano resembles that of a different volcano, Mount Merapi in central Java, also known as Gunung Merapi; there is also a third volcano named Marapi in Sumatra. The name "Merapi" means "mountain of fire" in the Indonesian language. West of Gunung Merapi is the Ijen volcano, which has a one-kilometer-wide turquoise-colored acid crater lake which now more famous as 'Blue Fire Crater', after BBC television documentary Human Planet and National Geographic mention it. The lake is the site of a labor-intensive sulfur mining operation, in which sulfur-laden baskets are carried by hand from the crater floor. The work is low-paid and very onerous. Workers earn around $5.50-$8.30 per day and once out of the crater, still need to carry their loads of sulfur chunks about three kilometers to the nearby Pultuding Valley to get paid. Many other post-caldera cones and craters are located within the caldera or along its rim. The largest concentration of post-caldera cones forms an east/west-trending zone across the southern side of the caldera. Source
