This entire day was spent in transit. Emily, Michael and I (who now seem to be travelling as a trio) got the train from Yogyakarta to Probolinggo. It was a 9 hour train journey through absolutely beautiful Javanese countryside and luckily we each had an entire row of seats to ourselves and were able to sleep! We took a picnic of peanut butter, jam, bread and bananas which saw us through the train ride and it was actually very pleasant. I can't say it was enjoyable when an Indonesian lady began blasting strange Indonesian music from her phone...and singing along but that's just Asia for you!

Everything had gone so smoothly and when we got off at Probolinggo not 100% sure what the best way to Cemoro Lawang was, we were over the moon when a man told us he knew exactly where we were to go and would take us in a shuttle to the bus stop where we could find a driver. So the three of us and 6 other backpackers got in super happy - this seemed too good to be true! And of course it was as we were taken to a travel agency who wanted us to pay loads of money to take their round trip tour to Bromo and back, leaving us all stranded and not at the bus station at all!

Luckily we found a mini van further down the road who agreed to take all 9 of us to Cemoro Lawang for a good price. We started to worry after a while of driving at 5 mph and having the driver keep stopping, getting out and saying there was something wrong with the bus - and started pouring water on the wheels!? Turns out he was literally wasting time as we were waiting for a few more people, but why he couldn't say that we just don't know. Oh Asia.

The drive was through winding mountain roads as we made our way up to the small town of Cemoro Lawang - bet the views would have been beautiful had it not been so dark. We were relieved to arrive at Cafe Lava Hostel and be given a superior triple lodge for the night. It felt like we were in Europe up in the Alps or something! After a well needed meal we went to bed excited for the day ahead.