Smokin'!

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As we couldn't arrange to climb Gunung Merapi, Javas most active volcano, in central Java we headed east from Solo to The Bromo region or Bromo-Tengger-Semeru National Park. It took us a whole day of travelling to reach the village of Cemoro Lawang, perched on the old crater edge. Basically, the arrangement here is that ancient volcanic activity from Gunung Tengger created a large crater of 10km diameter which now forms the main outer crater, of which the village of Cemoro Lawang is perched, with the Sea of Sand (volcanic sands and debris) at the bottom. Within the main crater rim and rising from the Sea of Sand, are the volcanoes of Bromo (active), Batok and Kursi. On the 5th we walked across the Sea of Sand and climbed up to Bromo, which was puffing out sulphurous smoke all the time. We edged out bets and walked acround the crater rim, taking an hour, and guess what, it didn't erupt. But we did find out later that it is at Level 2, above normal activity! We shouldn't joke though, it erupted on 8th June 2004, but as the monitoring equipment was broken, there was no warning so two people died and 5 people were seriously injured as they were climbing it. In the afternoon we headed back to the village and started chatting to one of the locals (extremely informative and kind). He ended up taking us to the volcanology centre where we got to see the sedigraph (earthquake monitor) in operation and the other monitoring equipment and geological maps - so interesting, even mark enjoyed it! The following day was a very early start at 3.30am to get to the top of Gunung Penanjakan before sunrise to get an awesome view of the volcanic landsacpe. We travelled upto a viewpoint in a jeep and got a great position to see Bromo smoking and Gunung Semeru (3676m), Javas highest peak, erupting every 20 minutes in the distance as the sun rose - a beautiful sight. Afterwards we headed back to Bromo again, and climbed it once more. A much better view this time as it was early and much clearer. At 9am we started our journey by bus and ferry to Denpasar in Bali. Arriving at 12.30am we took a taxi to the cultural centre of Bali, Ubud. When we got there it was really quiet and everywhere had shut up. No one was around apart from the guys at the 24-hour shop. They were very helpful and found us cheap and great accommodation in the back alleyways.

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