3. Beautiful Bromo
We decided to leave Pangandaran by the dead of night for the only reason being that it was the cheapest option. We were not so reliably informed that we would arrive back in Yogyakarta at 5 am so we thought it would be possible for us to wait at the bus station in order for us to get our bus to Bromo. In true Indnesian style the mini bus we were booked on not only was late, not only had more people in it than promised, but arrived in Yogya at 2am!!! We found an awful guest house and crashed there for the rest of the night. The following morning we woke early and began the rest of our journey to Bromo. We got on 2 further buses arriving in the mafia ran town of Probolinggo at about 11pm. Aside from being completely knackered we had to haggle with the local bemo drivers to give us a decent price to take us to our guest house. We had quickly worked out that walking away and ignoring was the best way of getting the price you want. Marky was always better at this than me. I always took the bate and got exasperated in the process! Anyway, we made it to our hotel, or to be more precise what we thought was our hotel, and settled down for the night. (we realised in the morning that the bemo driver had taken us to a guest house with the same name as our desired guest house. Basically the guest house we stayed in had copied the name of our desired guest house and put a number 2 next to it - a common theme in Asia).
The following morning we were hounded by a man selling transport to Bromo. We declined all his offers and made our way to the bus station. After 4 hours of nothing but endless lies and attempted rip offs we eventually got in a colt (mini van) that took us to the beautiful village of Cemoro Lawang which overlooked the Tenegger Massif - the extraordinary landscape that encapsulates Bromo's smoking volcanic cone.
We once again payed the minimal sum of money and stayed in the basic of basic accommodations, even I didn't moan about this as we had decided to trek up Penanjakan at 2am in order to see Bromo at sunrise. After no sleep we ventured out in the pitch black to begin our trek. Having grown accustomed to 35 degree heat it was a shock to the system to get out of bed and experience lows of 5 degrees. After winging a little about the temperature we decided to man/woman up and get moving. We were a little under prepared with 3 measley torches between 5 of us, but as normal the Ray Mears in Marky took over as the lead the way. 2 hours of uphill trekking later we reached the look out point - unfortunatley for us so had all the other people who taken the easy route and got jeeps up the mountain! Even so it was the most spectacular sunrise, the views of Bromo and the Tengger crater were mezmerising it made every step up the mountain in the dark worth it.
The trek down the mountain was just as spectacular at early dawn. Once we had made it down we packed our bags and caught another colt back to seedy Pobolinggo. We then jumped on another bus that was to take us to Dempasar in Bali. We were told it would take 7 hours hmmmmmmmmm........ 11 hours and two pairs of fat ankles later we arrived in the town of Dempasar.