(Agencies)
Updated: 2007-11-09 19:13

Indonesia's history is studded with seismic events. The 2004 Asian tsunami was spawned by a monster quake off the west coast, which sits at the intersection of three tectonic plates that form one border of the "Pacific Ring of Fire."

The plates - each moving at about the speed a fingernail grows each year - slide against or under each other, allowing molten rock from the Earth's mantle to break the surface via a volcano, or create energy released in an earthquake.

The country's 17,000 islands are home to about 70 active volcanoes, the most in the world.

Twenty of them are on Java, an island roughly the same size as Mississippi, and is home to more than half of the country's 235 million people. With demand for farmable land at a premium, many people choose to live within the shadow of the volcanoes because of the rich volcanic soil that is especially good for crops.

"We have lived here for generations. The land is my life," said Meseman, a 74-year-old papaya farmer on the slopes of Mount Kelud, who like many Indonesians uses only a single name and declined to heed the warnings to leave the area. "It is impossible for me leave. If anything, the volcanic ash will make my fields more fertile."

The cataclysmic eruption of Krakatau - which actually lies west of Java in the Sunda Strait, contrary to the title of the popular 1969 movie, "Krakatoa, East of Java" - followed several months of gradually increasing activity.

Anak Krakatau rose from the sea in 1930 and has been growing ever since.

Visitors can reach the island in about two hours by motor boat from the northern coast of Java, which is a 2 1/2-hour drive from Indonesia's capital, Jakarta. When it is quiet, it is a short, but steep walk to the top of the sandy peak.

When Anak began erupting last week, officials declared a no-go zone of about two miles. But the captain of a boat agreed to take an Associated Press reporter and photographer to Anak, briefly landing on the side of the volcano that was not erupting.

The ground was hot and appeared to vibrate beneath the pumice stone, a volcanic rock that floats on water.

Despite the history of its father, Anak is not considered especially dangerous - for now.

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