After 2 days meeting in early October 2017 in Makasar, we had a leisure time to visit tourism places. I joined the participants to visit Bantimurung waterfall, it took around 1.5 hours to the place from our hotel, Rinra. There were 3 mini buses went to the place excluding the Event Organizer and Committee. Approaching the place we could enjoy the beautiful scenery of green paddy fields and karst mountains.
Arriving at the place we took group photo at the gate, while waiting for the ticket, so many stalls sold souvenirs along the street right before the gate. Some salesmen approached us to offer the beautiful preserved butterfly. I'm interested in it, anyway I informed them that I prefer to buy after visiting the waterfall. One of the salesman was very active, he followed us to enter the place. He became my guide and photographer, he said that I didn't need to pay him as guide, just buy his souvenirs were enough.
Before visiting the waterfall, we stopped by at the toilet, only 2 rooms available, so we had to wait for our turn. We passed by a swimming pool with the natural water from the cave as their source, unfortunately it was cleaning at that time, so no water in the pool. A butterfly monument was available in the middle for us to take picture, then we could see the natural pool flowing from the waterfall, so many people soaked, played and splashed water to each other in the pool, the water looked green. It's a nice mild weather and we walked under trees shelter, so the sun didn't shine directly on us.
Some benches available at the side of the walk path, people could sit there to enjoy the natural pool and waterfall. My salesman 'guide' suggested us to cross the bridge to get better picture of the waterfall. He was right, we could see clearly the whole waterfall from the other side, even we could go under the waterfall, it's quite slippery so we had to be careful. He helped me to take some pictures including photo with my friends.
Bantimurung waterfall at South Sulawesi was one of national park, which popular as kingdom of butterfly. I didn't see it around the waterfall, no time to play with the water although I had brought my plastic sandal, as others had continue the journey to the lake. My guide accompanied me to go back to the left side to lead us to Batu Cave and the Kassi Kebo Lake. We had to go up through some concrete stairs, then we went along the waterfall stream. The pathway had been built well, it's easier for visitors to go to the lake. We could see the green water river at the right side while the left side was the karst cliff. In the middle of the way there were benches to take a rest, we also met a small hut selling instant noodle. It's much lesser crowded comparing to the waterfall area.
A big tendril of tree was on the pathway which often used by "Tarzan" to fly from one tree to the other tree, I asked my guide to take our picture, even one of my friend was really hanging on the vine's tree. As we were the last group, we had to hurry to follow the previous group. Finally we could reach the lake, it's greenish with small waterfall. Which amazed me was the beautiful butterflies flying and landing on the ground at the edge of the lake, although there was no flower there. With my iPhone capturing them was not too clear, my friend who brought SLR camera could get it much better and clearer.
As we were the last group came to the lake, we didn't have much time to enjoy it. After taking some pictures including group photo, we had to rush going back to the entrance. Near to the entrance my guide reminded me to buy his souvenirs, I took magnetic and keychain with real butterfly covering with resin to preserve. Actually the real preserved butterfly is more beautiful, but I'm afraid it would easily break when I brought back to Surabaya and I could not keep it well enough. I've just known that there was a butterfly museum and park at Bantimurung, unfortunately we didn't visit them as our EO (Event Organizer) said there's few butterflies at that moment. You also could visit a cave which had been used for meditation for few days previously by our ancestor.
After exit from Bantimurung park, some of our friends were still shopping souvenirs at the seller stalls, while my boss was kind enough buying us the grill corn, it's delicious, tasting sweet especially as it's free :-)
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