Bromo and Ijen
Monday, September 5th, 2005Oh, the stars in Indonesia are plentiful and breathtaking….I’ve never seen the Milky Way so vibrant before!
I left Solo on Tuesday, along with a Dutch couple, a French couple and girl from Germany. Together we were headed towards Mount Bromo Tengger National Park, in the middle of East Java, to climb Mt Bromo volcano for the sunrise. After a VERY long journey, headed by a bus driver running on two hours of sleep which was obvious in his driving INabilities, we checked into Cemora Indah hotel and enjoyed a bowl of soup and beer. Our wake-up call the next morning was a very brisk 3:15am, and the chilliness was mediated (only slightly) by the stunning views of the early morning sky.
The sunrise view can be appreciated from two vantage points: directly from the crater, or from the top of another mountain which overlooks the volcanos and parkviews. The other pairs made their way to the latter higher “lookout point”, which is accessible directly by jeep. My German friend and I decided we preferred working for our sunrise view, and opted to make the so-called short and obvious walk directly to the crater Mt Bromo. Short, perhaps. Obvious? Not really. After a shivering thirty minutes of stumbling through the Sand Sea, walking down what we thought was the track to the mountain (hey, following all these jeeps couldn’t be wrong, right?), a local Bromo-ian who had been following us for some time spoke up. We had assumed that, along with the twenty or so men hanging around the trailhead, he was interested in guiding us to the top (for fee, of course). We were partially right - he asked us if we were trying to go to Bromo. Indignantly, we said yes, of course. Well, it turns out we were NOWHERE near the crater and in reality were following the jeeps headed up to the lookout point. For a well-deserved guide fee, he turned (sharply to the left AWAY from the direction we’d been heading) and took us to the bottom of the crater. (Wherever you are, thank you again).
The walk is considered “easy” because of the man-made stairs that take you up the crater. In guidebooks, brochures and other descriptions, they’re billed as “moderately tough” due to the fact that there is over two hundred of them. The steps were no problem. What no one ever warns you about is the clouds of sulfuric SMOKE (acidic!) that come wafting down the crater, stinging your eyes, making your nose run, leaving a bad taste in your mouth and burning your chest when you breathe.
The views from the top, though, are breathtaking (oh wait, no that was the sulfur). Seriously, they were beautiful. I love the pictures I got from of us from the crater.
With flash, it was a different story. We could barely keep our eyes open due to the fumes. Our photographer offered to retake the picture, but I think it sums up our experience on Bromo quite nicely!
We made it back to the hotel and sat to thaw in the rising sun with cups of steaming hot Javanese coffee and milk. Yum. After breakfast, the van took off again, this time to Kawah Ijen Crater, in even farther east Java. We drove along the northern shore of Java before climbing through the palm trees, tea, coffee, and clove plantations that surround the Ijen region. Our homestay was just delightful. Unlike the rather shoddy Cemorah Indah (misleading…Indah is Indonesian for beautiful), our new rooms surrounded a sweet little courtyard filled with potted plants and orchids in the quite lush surrounding of Sempol. We toured the local coffee plantation and production facilities, and the surrounding neighborhoods provided for the workers at the factory. The local children loved posting for photos, then dashing over to laugh at the results. We enjoyed dinner family-style in the courtyard - our guide Tommy even specially prepared the Javanese fried tempeh which has become one of my favorites! - and headed off to rest up for our 4am wake up call. Our hike up to the crater was early, leisurely but still steep.
Maybe I say “leisurely” because unlike the local workers in the crater, I don’t have to carry over two hundred pounds on my back for four hours a day. The crater is a major site of sulfur deposits - so in two shifts a day, a team of two hundred workers hike up the mountain to the crater, down the edge of the crater (braving much denser sulfuric fumes than in Bromo) to the deposits to collect the freshly hardened sulfur within the crater region. As they are paid per kilo, they load up as much as possible and carry it on their shoulders back to the bottom of the mountain. Over 220 pounds. Two trips per shift. Usually wearing flip-flops. And if I haven’t made clear how terrible these fumes are - I was shocked to notice that after my hike up Bromo, the grey synthetic fabric on my backpack has permanently changed to GREEN due to some kind of chemical reaction from the smoke. And everyone breathes this in. Hmmm.
However consistent with Javanese graciousness, nearly every single worker we encountered was smiling and laughing. Maybe because they make a reasonably high salary of 340 rupiahs per kilo (roughly 70,000 rupiahs a day for 15 days of work - or less than 100USD per month) while the coffee factory workers take home 10,000 rupiahs per day. Their physical and mental strength, coupled with their smiles certainly is a lesson in humility!
We left Ijen after our hike, headed to a port on the coast of East Java and took the 30 minute ferry over to Bali. I must admit, I was more than a little sad to see our ferry leave the island of Java behind us. I truly hope to return soon.
Until then, Bali bound……..