Sunday, August 14, 2016

Sianok Canyon, a Deep Canyon that Stretches for 15 km



Sianok Canyon or Valley is a beautiful valley, green and fertile. The basic flow of a creek meandering banks of searching amid the backdrop of Mount Merapi and the Barisan mountain. Sianok Canyon is a steep valley (ravine) located in the border town of Bukittinggi, with District IV Koto, Agam, West Sumatra. 

The valley stretching and twisting as the southern border town of  ngarai Koto Gadang to Ngarai Sianok Enam Suku, and ended up Palupuh. Ngarai Sianok has beautiful scenery and become one of the main attractions of the province.
This gap is about 100 m stretches along 15 km with a width of about 200 m and is part of the fault that separates the island of Sumatra in half lengthwise (Fault Semangko). This fault forming a steep wall, even perpendicular and form a green valley - the result of decreased movement of the earth's crust (sinklinal)- draines by Batang Sianok (mean stem of the river, in the Minangkabau language) that the water is clear. In the Dutch colonial era, the gap is also called buffalo great, because so many buffalo that live in the bottom of the gorge.
Sianok stem can now be forded by using canoes and kayaks by an organization which managing water sports, named is  "Quraysh". The route is from village to village Lambah until Sitingkai Batang Palupuh for about 3.5 hours. At the edges still found many rare plants such as Rafflesia and medicinal plants. The fauna found such long-tailed monkeys, gibbons, hoop, deer, wild boar, leopard and tapir

Sianok Canyon is also a place of disposal of corpses for the Japanese prisoner in a cave on the Japanese colonial era. Japanese cave in the town of Bukittinggi in the instructions for the Division Commander Lt Gen Tanabe Moritake to 25 Army hosts Japan. Foxhole, reportedly able to withstand explosions of bombs weighing 500 kg. Construction of this hole substantially since March 1944 and was completed in early June 1944 with a total production of approximately 3 years with a depth of 49 meters below the ground surface. Japanese hole in Bukittinggi is one of the holes, the longest in Asia reached over 6 kilometers and which can penetrate into some strategic places such as Jam gadang located next to the Palace of Bung Hatta, and also in Fort de Kock who entered the territory of the Zoo Bukittinggi