Well what a weird end to a day, when we arrived finally in Ijen, I asked the hostel manager when's best to do the volcano tours and how much it'll be... He said well there's actually one person going tonight.. I was under the impression you go in the morning.. Not 12 at night..? Well I Managed to convince Jord... Why not let's so it now. Bearing in mind it's 11pm he goes off and picks up two bikes for us to rent whilst I asked his sweet mother to cook us some fried noodles and egg, what an angel! So after some food and a red bull caffeine shot we set off for the mountain. The further we got up this mountain the colder it got. It really felt like England again. After driving for about 50 minutes I noticed I no longer saw Jords light in my wing mirrors, so I stopped a while.. Nothing.. I turned round and slowly went back down the mountain.. Where I finally came across Jord, parked on the side of the road in the pitch black.. Flat tire. I could only feel a little proud that it wasn't me, if it's going to happen it'll usually happen to me. The manager of the hostel who drove the other lad came back to find us and managed to drive the bike up the rest of the way..
The climb to the top of the volcano took just over an hour, and I kid you not some of the turns were near vertical. When we reached the furthest point we could go by bikes we hiked the rest through a path that just been carved by a digger and left, not idea. Well an hour later and lost half by body weight, we reached the top, and could really start to smell the sulphur now. We rented out a couple of gas masks before we left which was a good job cause the fumes coming out of the volcano nearly make you choke! Going down inside the crater was ever tougher, it was like someone had just thrown a load of large rocks down the side to make a path. Well Hal an hour later we made it to the bottom and same the blue flames. A constant stream of blue fire was coming out of the ground as the gasses react with the air. When the sulphur is released out of the ground it almost looks like amber and then slowly cools to the yellow sulphur colour we know. The Indonesian workers are down there amongst the smoke chipping away at the cooled sulphur which they then carry in teams all the way back to the bikes by foot, 1 and a half hours away.. We spoke to a few and they say they do two trips and and about 6 hours a day.. Every day! Definitely couldn't do that! So they can work amongst the sulphur clouds, they cover the vents with old oil drums and just put a hole in the top so the gasses are collected and grouped upwards, they even connect a few to vent it somewhere else, clever to see. One of the guys who was chipping away at sulphur, invited me down to touch the amber looking sulphur to see how hot it was... He demonstrated how safe it was by touching it and priding it with his fingers.... Until he lent a little too hard and put his hand straight through it.. Shouting how hot it was.. Safe to say I didn't try it.! It was amazing to see how quickly it turned from this amber to yellow in a couple of seconds on his hand.
We hiked back up the crater to the rim to wait for sunrise and apparently a turquoise lake.. Having no idea where this lake was going to appear from.. We waited.. And when the sun came up an the clouds disappeared we saw this massive massive turquoise lake, strange to think something that big could exist up in the mountains, which was only a stones throw from where we were standing by the blue fires. After we had taken in the views we started to make our hour and a half decent back down the mountain.. It was soo much harder than the way up. I felt like I'd no cartilage left in my knees, and my shins felt like they had small breaks in them. Climbing up you just plant a foot and use your muscles.. Coming down a steep face all your pressure is on the front of your legs.. The only point of the climb I though I'd have to stop.