One Day That Feels Like Seventy Years of Love

Early morning mist still clings to the volcanoes when we slip into the old village church with its red zinc roof. The choir is already warming up; four-part harmony floats out of the open windows and lands on the clove trees. After the final hymn we are led from house to house, each one a small wooden prayer house of its own. In the first, Oma Lois (87) serves tinutuan with nine mountain greens. In the second, Oma Meri (91) cuts warm klappertaart with trembling hands. In the third, Oma Vonny (84) presses brenebon into your bowl and prays your name aloud. By noon you have three new grandmothers and a heart too full for words.

The 4 a.m. Psalm That Rewrites Your Soul

04:30 The car leaves your hotel in total darkness. By 04:45 we are inside Tomohon’s extreme market while the rest of the world is still asleep. Only the chili sellers’ headlamps and the red glow of clove cigarettes light the way. We walk between mountains of papaya flowers, live eels in buckets, and grandmothers who have been here since 3 a.m. You carry a basket that will soon overflow with tinutuan greens, smoking cakalang fufu, and the exact pig tail Oma Meri pointed at. At 06:00 we sit on plastic stools under a tarp and eat tinutuan straight from the pot while the market wakes up around us. By 08:30 you have tasted eight dishes you didn’t know existed, shaken hands with twenty strangers who now call you “nak”, and understood why the mountain allows this fire every morning.

The Morning The Sky Drinks First 

04:45 The air is still cold when we leave the hotel. By 05:15 we are standing under a 150-year-old sugar-palm that leans over the volcano like it’s whispering secrets. Bapak Yopi (the village champion) ties a bamboo ladder against the trunk and climbs barefoot, 18 metres up, moving the way other people walk. At the top he slices the flower stem; the first pure saguer of the day drips into a long bamboo tube. You climb after him (slowly, safely, heart pounding). When you reach the platform, the whole of Lokon and Mahawu lies beneath you, still wearing their night mist. He hands you the first cup. It is ice-cold, lightly sparkling, tastes like lightning and flowers. You drink while the sun rises through the palm leaves and turns the liquid gold. By 07:30 you are back on earth, feet black with volcanic soil, carrying a small bamboo tube sealed with banana leaf — your private baptism. The rest of the morning is quiet: fresh dabu-dabu with cakalang fufu under a rambutan tree, stories about grandfathers who lived in the tops of palms, and the gentle understanding that you have just been allowed to drink before the sky itself did.

A Slow Pilgrimage To The Smoking Heart of The Mountain  

04:30 The sky is still indigo when we leave the hotel. By 05:00 we are climbing the narrow path behind Rurukan village, coffee bushes brushing our legs, mist thick enough to drink. The trail winds through abandoned clove gardens where only the oldest trees still flower. At 06:15 we reach the ridge-top house of prayer, a tiny wooden prayer house with a red zinc roof that looks straight into Lokon’s crater. We sit in silence while the sun burns the clouds away and the volcano exhales a slow white breath. Breakfast is served on the church steps: tinutuan cooked over last night’s embers, klappertaart carried up in a basket, strong black coffee from beans roasted two hills away. After eating we walk the crater rim, black sand crunching under our feet, sulphur kissing the air. You are allowed to touch the warm rocks and leave one small coin for the mountain. By 10:30 we descend through a different path, past hidden hot springs where the omas once bathed their babies. The morning ends under a waringin tree with cold saguer poured from a bamboo tube older than anyone alive. You leave lighter, as if the volcano kept a piece of your heaviness in exchange for its smoke.

The Day The Mountain Speaks Through Your Hands and Feet

04:50 The car leaves the hotel in darkness. By 05:30 we reach a highland village where the Mapalus group — twenty men and women in simple sarongs — are already waiting under a waringin tree. A single blow on the sacred sea-shell horn (kul shel) echoes across the valley: the ancient call that says “family has arrived.” We are led to the family house for breakfast: tinutuan rich with floating-garden kangkung, warm nasi jaha from bamboo, rica-rica ayam cooked over coconut shells, and the first cup of coffee roasted yesterday. At 07:00 we walk together to the rice field or clove garden. The tambur drum begins its slow heartbeat. The Mapalus line up shoulder-to-shoulder and step forward in perfect rhythm, singing the old mahzan songs — verses about planting, love, volcanoes, and ancestors. You work beside them — pulling weeds, planting coffee seedlings, harvesting papaya flowers — while the songs wrap around you like warm rain. By 11:00 hands are black with volcanic soil and hearts are full. We cook lunch together in a small bamboo hut: whatever the earth gave us that morning becomes woku or paniki, served on banana leaves with stories instead of plates. In the golden afternoon we return to the village. Suddenly the kul shel sounds again — this time for celebration. Under the Minahasan-style roof or in front of the old village church, the Maengket dancers appear: swirling skirts, gentle steps that tell of harvest and courtship, voices rising in three-part harmony older than the Dutch. You sit on woven mats with the whole village, drinking coffee poured from clay kettles and eating kue rampa, panada, and cucur while the dancers circle closer and closer until they pull you in. When the last note fades and the sun touches the volcanoes, every Mapalus member ties one thin red-and-black string around your wrist. You leave carrying the rhythm of the tambur in your blood and the knowledge that today you were not a guest — you were the harvest.

The Day The City Becomes A Living Bouquet

04:50 The car leaves the hotel in darkness. By 05:30 we reach a highland village where the Mapalus group — twenty men and women in simple sarongs — are already waiting under a waringin tree. A single blow on the sacred sea-shell horn (kul shel) echoes across the valley: the ancient call that says “family has arrived.” We are led to the family house for breakfast: tinutuan rich with floating-garden kangkung, warm nasi jaha from bamboo, rica-rica ayam cooked over coconut shells, and the first cup of coffee roasted yesterday. At 07:00 we walk together to the rice field or clove garden. The tambur drum begins its slow heartbeat. The Mapalus line up shoulder-to-shoulder and step forward in perfect rhythm, singing the old mahzan songs — verses about planting, love, volcanoes, and ancestors. You work beside them — pulling weeds, planting coffee seedlings, harvesting papaya flowers — while the songs wrap around you like warm rain. By 11:00 hands are black with volcanic soil and hearts are full. We cook lunch together in a small bamboo hut: whatever the earth gave us that morning becomes woku or paniki, served on banana leaves with stories instead of plates. In the golden afternoon we return to the village. Suddenly the kul shel sounds again — this time for celebration. Under the Minahasan-style roof or in front of the old village church, the Maengket dancers appear: swirling skirts, gentle steps that tell of harvest and courtship, voices rising in three-part harmony older than the Dutch. You sit on woven mats with the whole village, drinking coffee poured from clay kettles and eating kue rampa, panada, and cucur while the dancers circle closer and closer until they pull you in. When the last note fades and the sun touches the volcanoes, every Mapalus member ties one thin red-and-black string around your wrist. You leave carrying the rhythm of the tambur in your blood and the knowledge that today you were not a guest — you were the harvest.

One dawn of fire-smoke, one afternoon of liquid jewel – Minahasa’s heartbeat in a single day.

At first light, Mount Lokon exhales. We climb through clove-scented mist to the rim where the earth still smokes and sighs, where sunrise spills molten gold across ancient craters. A cup of Tomohon coffee is born beside the steam; you drink the mountain itself. Later, beneath a bamboo roof on a terrace of cabbages and chilies, the farmers lay a feast: smoked riksa that remembers the fire, tinutuan soft as morning prayers, fish kissed by dabu-dabu flames, klappertaart sweet as childhood. The breeze carries church bells and the scent of wet soil. Then the lake appears – Linow, the sorceress – shifting from emerald to tosca with every jealous glance of the sun. Walk the wooden path over breathing water, taste eggs boiled by the planet’s own heart, and let the silence paint your soul the color of impossible dreams. When dusk finally calls, you leave carrying the taste of smoke, the color of turquoise, and the quiet certainty that some days are small miracles.

Scaly-breasted Kingfisher Dawn at Mahawu & White Cranes at Lake Linow

Where a jewel-coloured kingfisher greets the sunrise and elegant cranes dance on turquoise water.

05:30 – Quiet pick-up from your hotel. Coffee-to-go and binoculars ready. 06:00 – Arrive at the forested slopes of Mount Mahawu while the air is still cool and crisp. A gentle 30-minute walk along a shaded trail brings us to the prime territory of the dazzling Scaly-breasted Kingfisher (Actenoides princeps) – one of Sulawesi’s most beautiful and hardest-to-see endemics. With an expert birding guide, listen for its haunting whistle and watch it flash electric blue and orange through the morning light. Other likely sightings: Sulawesi Dwarf-Kingfisher, Yellow-billed Malkoha, Grey-sided Flowerpecker and the endemic Crimson-crowned Flowerpecker. 09:30 – Descend and transfer to a peaceful highland farm hut surrounded by clove and vegetable gardens. Enjoy a hearty brunch-style lunch served on the bamboo terrace: warm tinutuan porridge, smoked chicken, fresh sambal roa, perkedel jagung, and sweet pisang goreng drizzled with palm sugar. 12:30 – Short drive to the magical Lake Linow. Settle into a lakeside gazebo with a cup of freshly brewed Tomohon arabica coffee while we watch dozens of elegant White (Javan) Cranes (Grus antigone sharpii) – a rare and protected species – wading and flying against the ever-changing turquoise backdrop. The late-afternoon light turns the water into liquid glass, creating postcard-perfect reflections. 16:30 – Return to your hotel, relaxed and filled with images of wings and wonder.

The Morning The Water Becomes A Mirror for Heaven 

05:15 We leave Tomohon while the volcanoes are still wearing their night clouds. By 06:00 we are at the quiet wooden jetty of Remboken village. A narrow traditional wooden boat waits, painted sky-blue like every Minahasan lake boat. We push off into the mist that lies thick on Lake Tondano. The only sounds are the soft splash of the oar and the morning hymns drifting across the water from the little lakeside prayer houses. We glide past floating gardens of kangkung, past kingfishers diving for breakfast, past old women in sarongs casting nets from their front porches. At 07:00 the sun burns a perfect circle through the mist and the whole lake turns liquid gold. We stop at a floating bamboo raft where Ibu Martha (79) has already prepared breakfast on a tiny clay stove: tinutuan with lake fish, dabu-dabu lilang made with tiny purple shallots, freshly grilled mujair wrapped in banana leaf, and warm klappertaart she carried across the water in a rattan basket. You eat sitting on the raft, feet dangling in the cool water, while fish nibble your toes and the mountains watch from every direction. After breakfast we drift slowly to the western shore, to a hidden village church half-built over the water on wooden stilts. We tie the boat and sit inside the open prayer house while the women’s choir rehearses Sunday’s hymns. Their voices bounce across the lake and come back even more beautiful. Before leaving you are given one small bottle of water from the exact centre of the lake — the omas say if you open it at home on a hard day, the mountain will remember you. By 10:30 we are back on solid ground, hair still wet from lake spray, carrying nothing but the taste of water and song.

“Dance of the Highlands”

Saguer & Aren Craft Festival “Palm Psalm” [ TAP WITH THE PALM ] #B8860B

2. Sulawesi Artisan Odyssey “Forge, Loom, Clay & Bamboo” [ CRAFT WITH THE MASTERS ] #C66A4E (terracotta)
3. Whale-Shark & Karst Kitchen (2026) “Swim with giants, eat like kings” [ SWIM WITH WHALE-SHARKS ] #006994

5. Toraja Funeral Feast Pilgrimage (Jul–Aug only) “Death celebrated, life tasted” [ ATTEND THE FEAST ] #2E0854

“Palm Psalm”

“Forge, Loom, Clay & Bamboo”

“Dance of the Highlands”

Pimentez Vos Talents

Apprenez l’art de la cuisine minahasane dans un cours pratique et intime à Tomohon. Maîtrisez des plats comme l’ayam rica-rica ou le tinutuan avec des chefs locaux, en utilisant des ingrédients frais des marchés voisins. Idéal pour les foodies désireux d’emporter les saveurs audacieuses de Sulawesi chez eux.