Heart of Toba

Headhunters, cannibals, and jungle guarded the location of Sumatra's Lake Toba until 1852 when it was finally seen by a European explorer and drawn on the map. A surprise, for Lake Toba is the biggest caldera lake in the world. When the super-volcano Toba erupted some 74,000 years ago it was with an explosion equivalent to 2,800 times that of the 1980 Mount St Helens eruption in USA. It left the hole now partially filled by a lake sixty miles long and eighteen miles wide. with steep caldera walls.

Foster joined an Indonesian expedition team using sea kayaks to explore the lake. They circled the volcanic rebound island of Samosir, the Heart of Toba, an island once home to two hundred often-warring Batak kings. On the way the team learned about the traditional Toba Batak architecture, weaving, and dancing. They learned how convicts were once eaten alive, seasoned with the same ingredients still used in the spicy sambals. The huge dugout canoes, solus bolon once used for trade and war had slipped from favor during Dutch colonial rule, but many solo dugouts are still widely used for fishing.

With the help of the son of a famous Batak poet of the family of wife-givers to the Rajas Sisingamangaraja, Foster begins to understand what Lake Toba means to Toba Batak, and what its future holds. In Heart of Toba Foster offers a compelling portrait of Batak life inside the caldera, on the shores of Lake Toba.