Soroako, also spelled Sorowako, is a small mining town in the north-east of South Sulawesi

South Sulawesi

South Sulawesi is a province of Indonesia, located on the western southern peninsula of Sulawesi Island. The province is bordered by Central Sulawesi province to the north, South East Sulawesi province to the east and West Sulawesi province to the west...

 province, in the centre of Sulawesi

Sulawesi

Sulawesi is one of the four larger Sunda Islands of Indonesia and is situated between Borneo and the Maluku Islands. In Indonesia, only Sumatra, Borneo, and Papua are larger in territory, and only Java and Sumatra have larger Indonesian populations.- Etymology :The Portuguese were the first to...

 island in Indonesia

Indonesia

Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...

.
It is known to have the largest open-pit mine in Indonesia owned by PT Inco, a subsidiary of the Canadian

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 based nickel

Nickel

Nickel is a chemical element with the chemical symbol Ni and atomic number 28. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. Nickel belongs to the transition metals and is hard and ductile...

 company Vale Inco .

The town itself is a beautiful place to visit. Located in the Verbeek mountains , Soroako is surrounded by three natural lakes: Matano Lake, Towuti Lake and Mahalona Lake.
Matano Lake is the deepest lake in Indonesia and said to have some of the purest water in the world.

Most of Soroako's residents work as employees for PT Inco. They come to Soroako from all over Indonesia. The rest of the population work primarily as farmers or fishermen.
In the mountain side on the west side of town there is a natural cave that remains largely unexplored. Near the entrance is a chamber full of hundreds of skeletons that some say are the remains of a rebel force(PKI)from the 1950s and others claim is actually a native cemetery (similar to the cemetery caves of Tanah Toraja).

Matano Lake is surrounded by ring of small mountain rock. The weather sometimes can be very severe, often with thunder and lightning storms. Small earthquakes are common as well. Almost every year in December - January, a strange phenomenon occurs in the center of Matano Lake. A large tornado appears to stand still in the middle of the lake and remains there for a short time. Seen from shore the tornado looks to have a diameter of approximately 10 meters. While the tornado is standing still above the lake a cloud comes down to the surface of the lake and then seems to come up again through the funnel of the tornado.

The source of Matano lake is believed come from an area west of the lake that the native people call Matano village. In this area one can often see white-headed eagles and sometimes red-headed eagles (wingspan about 2 metres.