Kelimutu is a single volcanic summit in central Flores carrying three crater lakes, and each one is a different colour. Two of them sit side by side, split by nothing more than a thin shared wall, so one can shine turquoise while its neighbour turns black or blood-red. The colours never hold still. Over months and years each lake drifts unpredictably through turquoise, green, brown, black and red, sometimes changing within weeks. Nobody can tell you in advance what you will find. The lakes are intensely acidic and gases seep up through their floors, which is what shifts the colour. For the Lio people who live below, the three lakes are where the dead gather. The summit stands at 1,639 metres.
Most travellers meet Kelimutu at dawn. From the village of Moni you drive up in darkness around four in the morning and climb the last steps to a viewpoint on the highest crater rim as the sky begins to pale. Morning mist hangs in the craters and slowly draws back, and the lakes appear one by one — the pale one brightening, the dark one settling into a flat, bottomless mirror. Rim paths link all three basins, so you can see each from more than one angle before the day warms up. Below, pine forest, mountain grassland and the rice terraces around Moni fall away on every side. It is cool and often windy up there, and the mist can close in again without warning. No two visits are alike: the lake that was green last season may be brown the next.