Goa Kreo

Goa Kreo is a tourist attraction located in the city of Semarang. Kreo cave is formed by the natural cave and not the result of human-made. Now, in 2014, Goa Kreo is in the middle of Jatibarang reservoir, a dam that river dam Kreo, which in addition to solve the problem of flooding has also become a new tourist destination in the city of Semarang.

The visitors can look and give food to the monkeys on the way to the caves.

History

Goa Kreo’s history cannot be separated from the history of Demak great mosque. In the 14th century, the kingdom of Demak wanted to establish a grand mosque. There are 9 saints who spread Islam in Indonesia. Sunan Ampel, Sunan Bonang, Sunan Gunung Jati, Sunan Kalijaga were asked to locate the pillar of Demak Great Mosque. The saints want to do some praying activities, but there’s no mosque at that time, so they’re planning to build a great mosque. Sunan Kalijaga was responsible to look for the great tree to become the foundation of the mosque.

Therefore, the journey of sunan kalijaga looking for the great tree began along with 9 of his disciples. In the midle of the forest they saw a great big Teak tree which is planned to be cut down. But before they had a chance to cut it down, the great  teak tree moved by itself, so Sunan Kalijaga and his disciples named those region with “ Jatingaleh” which is mean “ moving teak tree”. And then the teak wood moved again into a different area to hide from Sunan kalijaga, and so Sunan Kalijaga decided to named that region with “ Sarindelik” which is a little village near Jatingaleh. After a long time jouney, he found the great tree and there’s a bunch of people surrounding that tree, so he decided to named that area with “ saka rame”. Since the teak tree always moved uncontrollably by itself, sunan kalijaga dispatch his disciples to keep an eye on the teak tree, the lookout point area  was named “ Trawas” which is mean “ to look for”. After that they decided to tied some slayers to keep the teak tree in place so that it could be cut down. However, when he came back again to cut down the tree, he could not find it as it kept moving with the movement of the forest, as the paths shifted and changed.

Once Sunan Kalijaja found the tree he was afraid that it would once again move, so he tied the teak tree down with scarves until it was secure. Once the tree was tied down, Sunan Kalijaja now faced the problem of how to transport such a large tree , the log itself was so large that 25 adult men could sit on it at once. To solve this issue he tried to float the teak wood in the river all the way down to Sam Poo Kong, however the wood got stuck in the river banks just outside of the city.  In the middle of the journey, when they’re taking a break from cutting down the tree, they decided to make some kind of heritage in a Cave form. Before Sunan Kalijaga and his disciples started to sculpt the cave, they had to make some sort of celebration in addition to make some historical cave.

At the celebration of the cave, Sunan kalijaga eats some lamb skewer, after he was done eating, he throw away the skewer on the ground, and eventually the skewer was growing into a bush of bamboos, which is named “bamboo krincing” and that smells like lamb, that’s the reason why the bamboos at the hiking path smells bad. So they started to make the cave and only after 15 meters depth they could already hear some people pounding the Paddy mortar. So they decided to leave it and Sunan kalijaga used the cave as a place to do some meditation, searching for the answer of how to get the teak tree to Demak. They about to continue their journey but four monkeys suddenly appeared in their path preventing the from going any further.

The four monkeys each appeared to be a different symbolic colour. One was white for the sacred clean water, one was black for the fertile soil, one was yellow to show the calm and peacful wind and finally the ast monkey was red to show bravery. All four of these monkeys offered their assistance to Sunan Kalijaga  and his people, helping him to move the teak tree. The four monkeys came up with the solution to split the tree into two sections to free it from the river banks and make it easier to transport. One half floated down to Demak to help build the Great Mosque and one half still remains were in was stuck in Semarang. At the time the monkeys wanted to go with Sunan Kalijaja to Demak , but he would not allow them to. Instead he ordered them to stay and ‘mengkreo’, which means to keep and protect this Goa. And after this the monkeys home was forever known as Goa Kreo.

Place

Goa Kreo contained in Sub Kandri, Gunungpati subdistrict, Semarang.

Facilities

• Cave
• Waterfall
• Gazebo
• Monkey
• Panggung Hiburan
• Indonesian food restaurant
• Bridge [1]

Source

• Goa Kreo Semarang