Lore Lindu

Lore Lindu is a 2,200-square-kilometre national park in the central highlands, named for the two valleys at its heart: Bada and Behoa. The valleys hold somewhere over 400 megaliths, stone figures up to five metres tall, of unknown age and unknown maker, standing in grass and rice.

Nobody has dated them with certainty. Estimates run from 1,000 to 5,000 years old. Their faces are weathered to abstraction; the largest, Palindo, leans at a slow angle in a field outside Sepe village.

The park is also a birder's draw — the maleo, the Sulawesi hornbill, the satanic nightjar, all here. Most visitors arrive overland from Palu (8 hr) or Tentena (5 hr). The road is slow and worth it.