As the other mountain which looks across at Bormo where we were to spend sunrise was nearly 3000m high it was well Baltic at 430 am when we got there. Genius-boy here had decided to stick to his sandals so his feet were freezing! We were given the most pathetic packed breakfast imaginable too. In the end it was another disappointing sunrise, with too much cloud. However, the view from the top down to Bromo (an active volcano with smoke rising from it) and the nearby perfect cone of a dormant volcano within the larger Tenneger crater was very nice. When the sun was well and truly up we then drove down to the foot of Bromo and climbed up to the crater rim and walked around. On this trip there were 6 of us in the jeep and I finally met some nice people in Indonesia! As well as the grumpy Chinese girl there was a Dutch couple and a French couple (well French speaking, she was from Reunion Island). From the crater rim you could see the smoke rising (and smell the sulphurous smell) and on the outside it was nice to look over the desolate moonscape of the larger crater.
By 9am it was time to get back on the bus, and various transfers later I was on another bus for a surprisingly long journey to Sempol village with a nice Swiss couple and an excellent friendly guide called Tommy.
On the way we stopped by a coffee plantation, and it turns out about the only people who live in the village are workers on the plantation and in the factory. On arrival Tommy took us to see the coffee processing plant (including the Civet cats for the special coffee!), and then we went to the home of our driver and had tea and macadamia nuts! Back to the hotel, and a very nice hotel it was too, with a swimming pool and a hot tub. I sat in the tub for ages and could feel some of the bumpy bus journeys soaking away. Dinner was then a buffet which offered up the same old Indonesian suspects, giving quantity but not quality!
It was up at a more respectable 430am the next day and we headed for Ijen crater. It was quite a hike up to the rim this time, again at a height of about 3000m. We shared the path with sulphur miners who carry around 80kg of sulphur each down from inside the crater (that's more than I weigh) twice each morning. At our guides suggestion we'd bought some sugarbread and cigarettes to give to them as we passed. The view from the crater rim was spectacular, down to the lake in the crater and the "Kitchen" area at the side where the poisonous gas and sulphur well up from the Volcano. The lake looked blue and inviting, especially when you hear it was 40 degrees, but then you're told the pH is 0.4 and realise you wouldn't last long in it. We descended the crater right down to the Kitchen, a French tourist died doing this a few years back, but she went in the afternoon against advice (the wind changes and blows the gas and smoke onto the path). This was a real experience and not one I expected as it wasn't in the guide book (but they get lots of French as there was a famous documentary about it there). After that the decent back to the bus was sore on the knees (and I wasn't carrying 80kg of sulphur), and I has some very nice fried banana before we set off. About 12 noon I was dropped at the ferry terminal to make my way across to Bali. (Incidentally, apparently most of the Sulphur goes to Japan to make face whitening cream).
This is Bromo in the background (the smokey one)
This is Ijen crater, see the sulphur on the left and the lake on the right.
Here's the "Kitchen" where they chip the sulphur away from. On the right there's a set of baskets that they carry on their backs weighing about 80kg.
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