Bali (Airport) Makassar Rantepao Tana Toraja + Rantepao

Makassar Bali (Airport)

Yes, you read it right. 👆 What a journey, my friends. I think this will be the longest post I’ll ever write, so be warned.

We came from a few relaxing days in Bali, to enter the most intense cultural immersion I’ve ever experienced in my entire life. Seriously: it was visceral, shocking, exhausting, thrilling and life-changing for me. You’ll see why pretty soon.

Oscar told me about the Tana Toraja tribe after his sister and a few friends were visiting a few summers ago, and really recommended the experience. The Tana Toraja culture revolves around death, and their lives are dedicated to preparing for this inevitable moment. Their funerals are a blast, with ceremonies and complex rituals including mass sacrifices of animals, relatives and visitors gathering for days and many other festivities. Add their unique architecture with the shape of inverted boats and their curious villages organised in castes, and you have a full recipe of a genuine rich experience.

The center of their culture is located in Rantepao, south of Sulawesi (one of Indonesia’s islands, northeast of Bali), around 300km of Makassar (the capital of this region). To get there, you have to fly to Makassar, and then travel by car to Rantepao, which takes 8 – 9 hours! (Some hotels offers you the transfer, make sure you check this information in advance!)

We had to spend the night in Makassar because we arrived really late, and there were no transfers to Rantepao at that moment (it’s not even safe, the roads are pretty crazy over there). We stayed in the Aryaduta Makassar, the best hotel in the city. Is not super luxurious (despite the 5-star rating in Booking.com), but the rooms are nice, and had a pretty good view from the ocean.

And so it begins…

The next day we started our journey with a driver that would take us to the hotel in Rantepao, and then pick us up and drive back to Makassar after a couple of days.

Our hotel in Rantepao was very unique. The Toraja Heritage Hotel is definitely the best option in the area. Despite their good service and excellent infrastructure, they respected the typical architecture, and made all the rooms look like the typical Tana Toraja houses, boat-shaped.

Full infrastructure with their cultural shapes

After we got installed (and rest a bit, after almost 8 hours of road trip), we started our trekking towards the Tana Toraja Regency. We’re talking about 8 hours (again!), this time hiking through rice fields, mountains, steep trails and muddy paths. I confess, it was much worse than I imagined (considering my lack of prepare, I’m not fit at all!). Besides, you can’t go much slow, because you have to get there before sunset (it’s dangerous doing this trail by night). So you have to keep the guide’s pace, which could be challenging…

But all this will pay out, I promise! 😅

Our first stop was in a grocery shop, to buy some provisions to go (water, snacks, etc). The first place to visit would be one of the traditional funerals (we got “lucky” that there was a funeral going during our stay), and our guide also asked us to buy some pack of cigarettes. Weird, right? I’ll explain later.

On our way to the funeral

The funerals “season” is during the months of July and August, and depending on the importance and the status of the deceased it can gather hundreds of people during 3 or 4 days. Everyone gathers, eats and drinks, while pigs and buffaloes are offered to the family to be sacrificed there, in honour of the deceased. The buffaloes plays an important role, and determine the level of the funeral. The more are offered, the higher the status of the family.

For any person who dies, at least 2 buffaloes must be sacrificed. This means that for financial reasons a funeral can be postponed for years of even decades, until the family can arrange the money (or the debt) to pay for it . We were lucky to coincide with a very important one, they would sacrifice about 30 buffaloes. They told us that the cost of that funeral had to be about 100,000 €. Imagine that for an Indonesian economy! It’s nonsense! 😳

To be able to see the funeral festivities, you have to be invited by one of the families to join them on their private area (like balconies), and watch the ceremony with them as guests. So, it’s polite to bring them some “thank you” gift, and they really appreciate (meaning: they ask for it) packs of cigarettes. I didn’t like to stimulate such unhealthy habits, but it’s something you have to respect as a guest.

The families gather around this “square”, where the rituals happens before the funeral.

Our special gift, and the guests and family members waiting for the ceremonies to begin.

The view from inside these private areas, where they offer you some snacks and tea

Clearly, we didn’t stay for the whole funeral (as I said, it can last for days). But we saw enough…

As the festivities began, they started to put the buffaloes to fight, as a demonstration of strength

Meanwhile, in the other side, they were doing the counting of buffaloes, and had already started with the slaughtering of animals. It’s not for the weak of stomach, actually… The smell of blood was everywhere, dozens of pigs screaming, tied while waiting to be sacrificed… Not pretty. But yet, it’s something you have to see it with your own eyes, and try to understand as a manifestation of their ancient culture.

Yep. That is blood on the floor. I’ll save you from the ugly pictures, don’t worry.

Now this is where things get pretty creepy…

Until the funeral, the deceased remains preserved in formaldehyde in the family home, and is treated like a sick person, even offered food and drink! Until his funeral is celebrated he will not “properly pass to the other life”: it will be the slaughtered buffaloes that will transport the soul of the deceased.

We went to pay our respects to the deceased and his family. The coffin was wide open, but I chose not to publish his picture here for… well.. obvious reasons.

The poor pigs were being sacrificed, one after another. After sacrifice, the pig was gutted right in front of us, all his organs were removed, and then his skin was burned with a torch. Later, all the meat from the sacrifices would be served to the guests in a great big feast. (we have videos of that, but didn’t want to ruin anyone’s lunch or dinner…)

The poor pig and the look on his face. May he rest in peace. 🙏

One of the kids brought us this giant beetle, so we can photograph it. There it is. 😇

From one death ritual to another

After seeing the funeral, we went to see what the Tana Torajas do with their loved ones after the funeral. The thing is, they are rarely buried in the ground. Instead, they are either interred in family tombs or placed inside or outside caves – there are many of them.

Arriving the site, we can see several statues placed outside the rocks. These are images of dead noble men and women that were carefully carved out of wood. Known as tau tau, these sculptures wear the clothes, jewellery and even the hair of the deceased. On average they could cost about 1,000€ to make.

The caves hold innumerable coffins and corpses, skulls and bones are everywhere. Friends and family bring “necessities” for their dead relatives – often money and cigarettes.

Skulls and cigarettes.

Every couple of years, families bring back their dead family member to a big reunion home. In these ma’nene ceremonies, friends and family offer food and cigarettes to the dead and lovingly groom and clean them. Then they pose with them for new family portraits, and that’s it! 😬

Leaving the caves, the guide took us to another place, where they usually bring the babies when they pass away. If they still didn’t have any teeth, they put the tiny bodies in holes in a tree. Kinda poetic, I guess…

We were deeply touched while looking at those trees…

The trees with the holes where they “burried” the babies.

On our way to the next attraction, we stopped by the house of one of the artisans responsible of making the famous statues of the deceased people. It’s a pretty meticulous process, using a picture as a reference.

We kept on hiking through rural areas, rice fields, some jungle and the smallest villages you could possibly imagine.

The castes in Tana Toraja have buffaloes horns outside their houses. The more horns they have, the more important the family is.

We followed our path (or our guide…), passing through incredible landscapes, rice fields, and tiny villages. Everything looked like coming out of a painting!

Rice fields and stunning landscapes on our way up.

When we finally reach the main village, we were tired as hell… Thirsty, hungry and tired. And it was surprisingly cold!

These are the houses we spent the night in.

The village was small, but still bigger than the others we passed on our way. A lot of kids playing outside, families busy with their duties… One of the families received us with a – much welcome – snack, contenting fruits, some types of bread and refreshments.

We were able to spend some time with the locals, talk to them about their lives and habits, and they seemed to be pretty curious about our lives as well. We helped them with some chores (like feeding the animals) and played a lot with the kids! 🙂

Here is Oscar showing the kids the funeral ceremony we witnessed, and the poor pigs being gutted. #RIP

(Not sure what was going on with this pose.)

After a very cold night sleeping on the floor of one of these houses, the day started with a rich breakfast, saying our goodbyes to the cutest kids, and start our journey back to Makassar. The way back would be much easier, since we chose to walk down to the River Maiting (approx. 1h way down) and return to Rantepao by rafting (Level 2, pretty easy). The visual experience was formidable, passing by the deep canyons, natural waterfalls and villages, seeing animals as iguanas and tropical birds.

After getting soaked by nature, we came back to Rantepao, to face another 8 hours until Makassar, to fly back to Bali.

Want to know where we went next? Check out our next adventure through Indonesia here.