Two Volcanoes in Two Days
People who know us will probably understand a couple of things about us. The first is that I like my sleep and I get grumpy without it, and the second is that, unless passed out, Rachel is almost always spinning with energy. These seemingly opposite tendencies can sometimes be problematic for us, but one of the times when it was particularly irritating (for both of us) was on our way to the infamous Mount Ijen – land of the blue fire.
Picture this scenario: after a back-breaking and seemingly endless ride through Bali’s jungles and beaches, we finally arrived at the final segment of our journey for the day – a half hour ferry across the straight between the islands of Bali and Java – only to find that it had been delayed by weather. Of course, there being a bit of a language barrier and having just come off an extremely relaxing couple of days in Ubud, we figured that this probably wasn’t a big deal and we’d just get our tickets and wait it out. True to form, after a delay of about fifteen minutes they let us board the ferry and get seated for the brief journey to Banyuwangi, the jumping off point for journeys to Mount Ijen. That was when the actual waiting started.
Once everyone boarded the ferry, they closed up the gates and…nothing happened. We waited, and waited. The captain assured us that the ferry would be leaving ‘in about ten minutes’ four or five times. We got on that ferry at about 5:30PM, and waited for it to leave until about 11:30PM, when they finally threw off the ropes and took off. Six hours of waiting for this ferry to leave with no food, no water, no sleeping, and all the while listening to hours of terrible Indonesian reggae. And, more importantly, almost no chance of doing the sunrise hike to the top of Mount Ijen, as we would be arriving to town when our transport was supposed to leave. Needless to say, upon actually arriving in Banyuwangi and getting to our hotel, I was very grumpy and had no interest in doing anything but sleeping. Rachel, however, was getting us up that volcano, and the hotelier was nice enough (the bastard!) to call back the car that had just left for the mountain and get us on it. Allen’s sleep schedule – 0, Rachel’s energy – 1, and on our way to Mount Ijen we go.
Mount Ijen was going to be the first of two volcanoes and two sunrise hikes we were doing in two nights, and the main draw here is the sulfur that abounds in the crater. For some local hard-working Indonesians (more on this in a minute) this is a boon, as the sulfuric minerals can be mined and sold to feed their families. For tourists, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience to see the blue fire that naturally occurs as the sulfur burns within the cracks and crevices of the volcanic crater. For everyone, the sulfur also creates a thick, hazardous gas that blinds and chokes you as you do these two activities.
The cutting wind and sulfuric acid smoke didn't make for great pictures, but it did give us something to remember!
All sulfur that comes out of the crater is hauled up by hand in these loaded baskets.
The local Indonesians get the worst of it. These people have, by far, the worst working conditions of anyone I’ve ever seen (including those poor bastards hiking building materials up Mount Kinabalu!). Every morning they hike up to the top of this volcano, on foot, carrying a bamboo pole with two baskets on the end, which they fill with a few kilos of sulfur and then hike down. The hike is so treacherous in the actual caldera that it must be done on foot. Some of these guys are wearing flip-flops, and the lucky ones get gas masks to protect their lungs. On the windy nights, when the breeze cuts to the bone and nearly knocks them off the skinny trail they’ve just clambered up to get their minerals, it’s not so bad. But the nights with no wind, and the days with heat, they have to crawl blindly through clouds of yellow toxic gas in an apocalyptic wasteland, sweating sulfur out their pores only to come to the top, crawl down, and do it again. These freelance miners live on the poverty line, at the fringes of existence, and without hope of improvement in their lives until something drastic changes.
The hike that the sulfur miners do on the daily is the same that we did, starting from the base of the mountain. The first part isn’t so bad – fairly steep, but with a smooth, well-trodden trail until the half-way point. After this, things get a little more hectic – the trail gets steeper and starts walking around the ring of the caldera; when the wind picks up, it’s enough to knock you off the side if you’re not careful. The final part of the hike goes down into the caldera, and it’s the most treacherous part; hiking down jagged rocks at an impossibly steep pitch in the cold darkness while getting choked with sulfur gas does not make for a good time. The reward at the bottom – the blue fire – makes up for the hike, at least this one time. Though sometimes hard to see through the clouds of cold, corrosive yellow gas, the ethereal color of the flame that dances and spurts from the cracks in the ground make the Venusian scenery seem almost dreamlike – if you commonly have nightmares of alien landscapes, of course.
Note the sulfur stones, the toxic gas, and the famous blue fire.
The hike out of the caldera is equally treacherous, and the lucky ones get a glimpse of the Ijen lagoon, a fantastically green lake in the bottom of the caldera, through the clouds of gas. We weren’t that lucky, so we just had a cold hike down the mountain to look forward to (as well as a beautiful sunrise), which we did at speed to warm ourselves.
Sunrise over the crater rim.
Apocalypse chic.
For us, the Ijen hike was expected to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience to see some fantastic blue flames spurting from the ground. What it turned out to be was a walk through an active mining site, and a look at people living on the very edge of life as we know it – and some blue flames. I wouldn’t wish their problems on my worst enemy, but we sadly know that this short, hard lifestyle is necessary to feed their families. It’s one thing for people to choose to brave the gases once, to see something they can’t see anywhere else in the world – it’s quite another to do it day-in, day-out, for your entire life.
After our sobering experience at Mount Ijen, we boarded our train-bus-minibus combination to get up to Mount Bromo, the second of our two sunrise volcano hikes. One the way there, we met a really cool Mexican dude named Jan, who we ended up sharing a room and hiking with the next morning.
Mount Bromo is actually just one of several volcanoes within the Bromo National Park, but it’s by far the most famous because of the smoke that pours out of the caldera at all times of the day, making it visible from miles away. The park also features sand dunes, scrubland, and several other smaller mountains. It was up one of these mountains that we would be hiking up the next morning to get our ‘volcano view.’
None of this we knew however – on the drive up to the park, it was quite cloudy and rainy, and by the time the clouds broke it was dark. When we woke up in the morning at 3:30AM, it was still dark, and aside from a beautifully starry sky, it was dark for the hike all the way up the mountain to King Kong Lookout.
Check out that shooting star!
Dawn breaks.
But when the skies broke on that beautiful morning, and let an absolutely surreal sunrise crawl over the cliffs and onto the park, we were awed. Mount Bromo and all the landscape around it was spectacular in the perfect morning light, and would only get more-so as we continued to explore it. We sat there for almost an hour, taking it all in, but we knew that we’d have to get closer if we wanted to really say we’d seen the place. At this point we’d hiked several kilometers out of the way to get to the lookout, and would have to hike several more to just enter the park, and then several more after that to get to the actual volcano, taking the better part of the day. So, how to get there?
Our buddy Jan staring longingly at the sea of clouds.
I had no idea they had monkeys here, until she started throwing her poop at me.
First glimpses of the volcano.
King Kong Maniacs!
Enter the King Kong Maniacs.
This gang of free-wheeling motorcyclists take tourists from the top of King Kong Lookout, through the back way into the park (thereby bypassing the park fees gate – sorry, not sorry Indonesian government!), and right to the base of the volcano, before taking you home to your hotel once you’re done the volcano hike. They go faster than the tourist jeeps, can rip through the sandy dunes and side trails like no one’s business, and help you with the best photo spots and lookouts along the way. Both us and the Maniacs had a riot – and all for a very reasonable price.
Next stop, Bromo.
A view into the abyss.
After an exhilarating ride on the bikes, we arrived at the base of the Bromo volcano. It was even more imposing from the bottom, and sounded like a jet engine was taking off – even from a couple hundred meters (600 feet) away. As we hiked up to the rim, the sounds got louder and louder, and approached deafening when we crested over the top and got our first look at the caldera.
You know when you’re a kid, you make those little clay volcanoes and then fill the craters with baking soda and vinegar? Then they’d bubble up and erupt over the rim and down their steep, triangular edges before reaching the base? Well that’s exactly what Bromo looks like. It’s every little kid’s dream volcano, except at big kid size.
The actual Bromo crater is the one on the left with the smoke coming out, but there are lots of volcanos in the National Park.
It's funny, you know these things exist because of nature documentaries and movies and other things, but knowing a thing exists and actually seeing it with your own eyes are two very different experiences. Looking into the caldera confirmed this for us. Down the very steep sides, and into a hole that looks like it goes into the center of the earth, the volcano gushes smoke and sulfur, all while roaring like a lion. It was incredible – the scale and the noise of it was unfathomable, like the whole planet was breathing from this damned abyss. It was one of the most surreal things that Rachel and I have ever seen or experienced, and it completely took our breath away.
After being awed at Bromo, we made our way back down the slope and onto the backs of the Maniac’s bikes. We ripped back to the hotel, but despite the speed we managed to miss the shuttle back to the train station. We said goodbye to Jan as they squeezed him on, but we had to wait another couple of hours and eventually pay the minibus driver double the regular fare so we could get down to Surabaya before the next day, which we were very keen to do. After the incredible natural scenery we’d had the past few days, we were ready to step into Indonesia’s cultural heartland – Yogyakarta – and for a little shut-eye to boot.
So many times I've remembered this moment and thought, "man, how easy it would have been to just give her a little shove..."
...KIDDING!!!
Well, most days.
