Driving across the remainder of Java towards Kawah Ijen. Up in the mountains it is exceptionally green and undeveloped, a complete contrast from the very urban and congested highway that linked Yogyakarta with Mt. Bromo. Yesterday it took 12.5hrs to travel 400km, that's an indication of the traffic! Thankfully our eleven seater mini van had only four of us in it so we had room to stretch out.

This part of the journey sees us in a car all to ourselves! We've certainly been lucky so far with transport. And the accomodation for that matter. I was expecting something awful but when we arrived at 9.30pm, the room, bathroom and bedding were clean and I got hot water. Tony wasn't quite so lucky.

The road has practically dissapeared, no doubt eroded away by rains. It's raining now. As usual it started at 2pm. We've just passed three women walking with huge leaves on their head, serving as umbrellas.

This morning we got up at 3:30am and walked up the very steep-surprisingly steep in fact; mountainside to the viewpoint to watch sunrise over Mt. Bromo. We were offered lifts in cars, on motorbikes and on horse but we kept going on foot.

Whilst there were quite a few people at the top, the numbers were limited to dozens and not hundreds as it can be in peak season and we therefore had uninterrupted vistas of the volcanic plateau.

Several visitors were from Malaysia and they all wanted photos with us.

The sunrise was one of the best I have seen in quite some time. Sunbeams shot up in every direction, illuminating the clouds and mountainside and all the while, the stars could still be faintly seen. It was quite beautiful.

In the darkness we could just make out something that looked like mist. As the sun got higher and the sky lighter, it became apparent that this was actually the smoke billowing out of Mt Bromo which is at present, very active. Due to the ongoing eruptions we couldn't climb it to peer over the crater and had to make do with admiring from a few hundred meters away.

A climb to the crater rim is reserved for Ijen, our next stop.

20th feb

Well we're certainly having our most entertaining journey yet. Karaoke on the ferry from Java to Bali. Microphones get passed around and passengers can sing along to the video screens. I'd prefer to listen to this for the next four hours rather than get back on the ramshackle bus where we are stuck on the back seat, no air con and surrounded by men puffing away on cigarettes. The concept of death by passive smoking hasn't yet reached Indonesia. At 70p a packet, smokers aren't exactly encouraged to give up either. I definitely think this will be the bus journey of bus journeys... Our final bus journey ensuring it is one to remember. Well, second to last actually. We've yet to get a connecting bus for the last hour. We're already contemplating a taxi given how bad this one is and the fact we've been up since 1am.

We climbed Ijen this morning. The climb to the rim was a calf burner. Thankfully it was only 3km. The reason people come to Ijen which is definitely off the beaten path and not so easy to get to, is to see the sulphur lake and climb down the crater to see the blue flames caused by sulphuric gasses igniting. Sulphur miners work here, trekking to the bottom, hacking out the sulphur, most not wearing a mask to protect themselves from the toxic fumes, and then carry their loads of 100kg back up to the crater rim, trekking along a narrow rocky path with a precipitous drop at the side. This is backbreaking work, no doubt with long lasting consequences and yet they get paid a measly £10 per day!!

Whilst we didn't really need a guide as several people were heading down, we asked if we could follow one if we paid him. He was more than happy to oblige. In return he pointed out the difficult path sections and gifted us some sulphur which is allegedly good for the skin. He made a mould of Hello Kitty from the hot sulphur and donated that to us too. Unfortunately Kitty snapped in half before we'd even got back down the mountain.

The blue flames, which can only be seen here on Ijen and in Iceland, were slightly disappointing. They weren't as big as we expected and they were mostly obscured by the huge plumes of sulphur smoke which poured out of vents at the bottom of the crater.

After a while we trekked back to the top to watch the sunrise from the rim, so we could watch the lake materialise and see it's azure blue, no doubt rather hot, water. The lake is the highest acidic lake in the world.

On our way back down the mountain we bumped into our sulphur miner. He shouted out ' Leanna' as he took a break from carrying his baskets down hill. Tony tried to pick it up and found he couldn't even lift it from the ground. How on earth this little man could carry 100kg is beyond me. Super strength!

Once back down we got on our way, our little toad of a driver dropping us at a bus office at the side of the road. They wouldn't put us on the decent bus unless we paid for another ticket. Our 'tour' which charged double the actual bus price, only allows us on the lowest class bus available.

This morning our driver refused to drive us the 45minutes to the mountain unless we paid him the park fees direct. At best 2/3 of the money made it to the national park. At worst he pocketed it all. This is because we told him last night we didn't want to arrange a guide with him. He was charging three times the amount we gave our guide and we paid him handsomely. Had the company arranged it, the guides would see very little of the money handed over.

This scam came after the previous driver had charged us park entry fees for Mt Bromo only for us to find out we didn't need to pay any as we could only go to the view point due to the eruptions. This was after we'd refused to pay at a hut set up at the side of the road as we suspected it was part of a scam. We were right. The national park entry hut was miles up the road.

We had a rather heated discussion with the driver and us refusing to give the room key back for the hotel until he returned our money.

Basically we've come to the conclusion that everyone is trying to scam you in Indonesia. Every other traveller we have spoken to says the same.