Beautiful Bromo & Intimidating Ijen

Having got back to Yogyakarta we had to make some decisions on where to go next - realising we wouldn't have time to go to Borneo before we needed to be in the Gili Islands for Christmas, what with the unreliable public ferry that only runs every few days from Java to Borneo, we planned instead to head east through Java to visit the volcanic regions of Bromo and Ijen and undertake a couple of hikes.

This time we stayed in the 'Javanese Homestay' in Yogyakarta. Whilst here we dropped some more washing into the best laundrette in Indonesia, after which Sophie had a slight mental breakdown in the hotel room about not having any suitable clean clothes to wear, that would both keep her cool and cover herself in the Muslim area...cue heading to the shops to buy some new clothes, much to Trevor's exasperation. We also indulged in a few western meals, sick of the amount of rice we had just eaten, and found a tiny LED Christmas tree in a shop to take with us as our one and only Christmas decoration this year. At this point we posted home the collection of Christmas tat we had bought, along with a few souvenirs for ourselves, and our India and Nepal Lonely Planets which were clogging up our bags. It only took 3 hours (!!) to complete the process, three times of getting the wrapping service to undo all their handy-work to rearrange items into different boxes, and jumping ahead of queues of people to get everything sent home in the cheapest way possible (we are glad, and surprised, to say it did all get home just in time for Christmas)!

After getting some advice from a French couple staying in our hotel on how to enter the Bromo region for free, we caught our train the next morning to Probolingo, a town near Bromo, and then finally a mini-bus to Cemero Lawang after waiting for hours and arguing with a good few people about when it was going to leave with enough passengers! That evening we stayed in Cemero Lawang at the foot of the Bromo region in an extremely basic, cold room, again with just an Indonesian style toilet. To our surprise the room did actually have a hot shower...when we say hot, it was boiling and we had to jump in and out of it to avoid scorching our skin off. After around 4 hours sleep we got up in the dark again to make the 1.5 hour ascent to the sunrise view point across Bromo. Having been told it would be very cold for the ascent we wrapped up warm in all our layers, only to have to stop and take most of them off after 10 minutes - we don't think most Indonesians realise the temperatures we are used to in England! The view of the sunrise wasn't overly impressive, again marked by cloudy weather, but the view of the Bromo region, with a lunar-like appearance was beautiful and worth the walk. After a cup of tea and taking the obligatory photos we descended back down into the region next to the volcano itself and ascended to the lip of the crater. The volcanic area has been closed to visitors several times over the past few years due to risk of explosion and heightened activity, and on arrival at the crater rim there was a lot of sulphurous gas and steam coming out of the volcano, leading us to talk about how much we'd like a party-egg sandwich at that point! Walking along the crater with the barrier rail beside us we admired the view...until the rail disappeared and Sophie almost had her second breakdown in as many days, suddenly realising that with about 2 feet between her and the steep side leading down into the volcano, she was definitely either going to fall or have some urge to jump down into it! Trevor took this opportunity to take some queasy selfies of the both of them, before descending back down the outside of the volcano on a different route of soft dirt, down whch you could run like a man on the moon!

Upon return to our hotel (if you could could call it that) we didn't even have time for a shower before setting off on the bus back to Probolingo and then getting another dubious bus to Igen, our next port of call. Igen (translated as 'Lonely Mountain' is a 2368m Volcano, famous for its crater lake and also its sulphur mine where the noxious gasses combust and create spectacular blue flames visible at night). Along for the ride was Demetri, a 27 year old backpacker from Kazakhstan who we had adopted at Bromo. After having to hire a car between the three of us for the last two hour part of our journey to Sempol, the main town near Ijen, as of course all the buses stopped running at 12pm, we reached our hotel 'Aribika' set in a coffee plantation about an hours drive from the volcano. Because of the lack of properly organised transport in the area we spent the evening trying to figure out what would be the cheapest way to get to the volcano for midnight, to see the crater and blue flames. The hotel pretty much had us over a barrel and it ended up costing us 700,000rps between the 3 of us for trasnport! We did however haggle down from 800,000 and managed to get dinner at the hotel without paying so that was at least some consolation. Already very tired from getting only several hours sleep the night before, by the time we hit the sack it was gone 9pm and we had to get up 3 hours later for the hike up the volcano in the middle of the night.

It pretty much seemed that as soon as we had closed our eyes the alarm sounded; we rushed to get all our hiking clothes on and bags packed, and piled ourselves and our bags into the awaiting taxi, reluctantly eating our free hotel breakfast of bread, a boiled egg, and some chocolate sprinkles?! On arrival at where we would begin our hike, we rented some proper war-style gas masks from a shop nearby which turned out to be one of the best descisions we made! The hike up to the crater was a long and arduous 2 hour trek of constant uphill hiking (with Sophie certainly not a morning person this was definitely not her idea of fun), often in foggy conditions, where you struggled to see the edge of the trail, our head torches not being very efficient at penetrating the fog. Upon finally reaching the top we followed a small rocky path down and decended into the crator, the fog becoming so dense that it was almost impossible to follow the path; eventually we gave one of the sulphur miners some money to lead us into the crater safely. We were pretty sure this activity would not be open to tourists back home; it was claustrophobic and at times quite a scary experience! We had in fact read that a couple of years earlier a French tourist had fallen and died on the path down and that falls and injuries were common. The miners themselves carried 2 wicker baskets joined by a length of bamboo over their shoulders, spending 6 hours a day trekking up and down the volcano carrying 75kg of Sulphur on each trip and getting paid only 700rps a kg, most of them working without a gasmask and inhaling all sorts of poisonous gasses. We had to take each step extremely slowly down into the crater due to the fog which was now mixed with sulphur fumes smelling very strongly of egg, and after stumbling on loose scree our sulphur guide handed Sophie his LED torch which was much better at penetrating the fog and gave us a clearer view. We both put on our gas masks at the top though on many occasions we had to stop and almost drop to the floor with our eyes shut due to fumes of sulphur rising up from the crator and being carried on the wind, making our eyes burn. About halfway down the fog and gasses made visibility so poor that you could hardly see infront of your face. We passed several miners on the way who seemed much better at dealing with it all but we did also pass some tourists, one of which had just come up from inside the crater and seemed in a pretty bad way, warning us to be careful which didn't do much for our nerves.

After about 40 minutes or so we reached the bottom and the fog lifted to a degree, though the fumes of sulphur were much more intense at times.The landscape inside the crater was quite alien and looked like some strange moonscape or set from a sci-fi film. Against the blueish-grey backdrop were many suphur vents spitting out plumes of gasses, head torches visible through the haze where miners were digging away at the rock. Also for the first time we saw the blue glow of flames dotted around the vents where the gasses were igniting; an eerie amd awe inspiring natutal occurrence to witness! Venturing further through the crater and across some pretty rickety looking bridges we found Dimitri who had gone on ahead during our hike up. We spent the next 30 minutes or so making our way around the maze of vents trying to capture it all on camera whilst also trying to avoid the eye-burning plumes of gas that kept bellowing out randomly in our direction. There is little in the way of instructions or signs to give you any idea of where you can and can't go; the only guidance would come from a miner who would shout at you if you went in an area that was dangerous! We can both say it was one of the stranges, most surreal and probably scariest experiences of our trip so far. Sadly because of the weather conditions we couldn't make out the blue lake but were both glad to start the hike back up out of the crater!

The hike out and down the volcano was much easier as the sun had risen and burnt off some of the fog and made the track down much more visible. By the time we reached the bottom we wre all pretty tired and it wasn't until we were off the mountain that we realised all our clothes and bags were absolutely saturated with sulphur and stunk of eggs (it would take several washes of our clothes and bags to get the smell out, although you even now some things seems to retain a eggy tinge!). Also all of Sophies' silver and white gold jewellery had turned black from the fumes until she got it all polished - we wonderes what the sulphur had done to our bodies!!

Once back with our driver there was no stopping to get a shower back at the hotel; instead we were straight off to the ferry port of Gilimanuk and over to the island of Bali. Sitting on the ferry stinking of eggs in the midday heat wasn't the best feeling in the world, but it was made much worse for Sophie who started to get severe burning in both of hers eyes due to the sulphur getting behind her contact lenses. We both spent a good 10 minutes trying to wash her eyes out with water in a cramped ferry toilet, while she had her third breakdown in this period, sure she was going blind! Onward to Bali we were looking forward to some beaches, more than 3 hours sleep a night, and geting some restbite from the last several days of hiking around volcanoes...not an ordinary day at the office!