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Where The Green Ants Dream
Yes, sure they have dreams and maybe those dreams are even our ordinary life... but...

We travel full of nostalgia
toward the South and the East,
pushed by an obscure
and thankful premonition of homeland
and we find here the heaven,
the fullness and the rich abundance
of every gift of the nature,
we find the sincere,
simple and childish men of the heaven.

But ourselves behave different;
here we are foreigneir and without citizen,
since long time we have lost the heaven.
Hermann Hesse

_____________________
West of Gunung Merapi is the Ijen volcano, which has a one-kilometer-wide turquoise-colored acid crater lake. 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.

Sulfur Mining at Ijen
An active vent at the edge of the lake is a source of elemental sulfur, and supports a mining operation. Escaping volcanic gasses are channeled through a network of ceramic pipes, resulting in condensation of molten sulfur. The sulfur, which is deep red in color when molten, pours slowly from the ends of these pipes and pools on the ground, turning bright yellow as it cools. The cooled material is broken into large pieces and carried out in baskets by the miners. Typical loads range from 70–100 kilograms, and must be carried to the crater rim approximately 200 meters above before being carried several kilometers down the mountain. Most miners make this journey twice a day. The miners are paid by a nearby sugar refinery by the weight of sulfur transported (600Rupees per kg). The miners often use insufficient protection while working around the volcano and are susceptible to numerous respiratory complaints.
from Wikipedia

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Additional Photos by Luca Belis (Mistral) Gold Star Critiquer/Gold Star Workshop Editor/Gold Note Writer [C: 551 W: 70 N: 2096] (13694)
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