Volcano

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Probolinggo is a government town - a provincial capital. I don't know if there's anything to see and the guidebook doesn't think so. Anyway, I'm not hanging around. Ramadan's started and people are fasting during the day. Work goes on, of course. Not as if every shop and office are closed, although many will close early during this period so people can go home and grab spoons, waiting for the signal. I'm here to

In the morning I take a bemo to the bus station. The driver tells me I should catch another bemo up to Cemoro Lawang not a private car as they're too expensive. Still, his advice doesn't prevent the private drivers - the pirate drivers - from coming at me. I tell them I'll take a bemo but they're like advertising: they target fear. Yes, sure, bemo's cheaper, they tell me, but it takes three hours to get there. By that time the mountain's all clouded over, you can't see anything. We'll get you up there in 90 minutes. Bemos are RP 25 000. Private car driver wants 100 000. I negotiate one down to 75 000 and we go. Driver tells me his name's Tony. I wonder if it's a nickname or a real name.

We drive up and up into the hills, road getting steeper all the time and get to Cemoro Lawang in an hour. Tourism's been good to this village. Neat, clean, looks relatively well off. I pay the park entrance fee and the offical points to the trail: at that dumpster, he says, turn sharp left and go down the trail. I change from sandals to trekking shoes and set off.

Tengger caldera is 10km acorss and has two cones inside, both visible from where I stand. One's a dome, green with low shrubs and is called Mount Batok. The other's a peakless cone with smoke emerging, stilling fuming after blowing its stack. This is Mount Bromo. Between me and the cones lie 3km of flat, lava lakebed.

I take the very, very steep trail down the inner rim of Tengger Caldera to the lakebed, walking on volcanic dust that billows up around my ankles and sifts into my shoes like dark talcum powder. It's not a long way down and in five or ten minutes I reach the lakebed.

I go about a couple of hundred metres across this when the wind picks up. Volcanic dust and grit assault me. I pull my hat down, protect my eyes with my hand. It's like walking through a dry, gritty blizzard at times. I can feel the stuff between my teeth. I plod onward. The ground here is not powdery like the slope down was. It's hard at times, sandy at other times. Black and tan are the colours.

I'm about two-thirds of the way across when I see a figure coming towards me. Turns out to be a man on a horse who offers to take me to the cone and back for RP 100 000. I tell him I'll walk. He says just to the cone for 50 000. I say I don't have that much. He says how much? I say 20 000. He says okay. I think what the hell, I rode a camel in a desert in India, I can ride a horse in a volcano in Indonesia.

He dismounts, I mount, he leads. He's got three teeth and is wearing hight-top rubber boots, like a fireman. He's also got on a shirt or two, a jacket and a bright orange vest. It's not so warm up here and the wind feels a bit cool. I can see why he's dressed as he is. It's nto freezing, but spend all day up here....

There's a tree or two out here, a few shrubs and tough grass and a Hindu temple. I feel like I'm on the set for a Conan the Barabarian or Indiana Jones movie. There's a long flight of stone stairs with balustrade that climbs the cone to the crater's rim. They're recent, not ancient, but I can almost see robed men dragging virgins up here, chanting, praying, flinging the screaming girls over the rim.... More Hollywood B-grade thinking.

Near the stairs a guy wrapped in a sarong and sitting on a large rock tries to sell me a bouquet of dried flowers to throw into the crater. Naaaahhhh, I tell him. He looks at me peevishly as I move along. My horse knows exactly where it's going and stops at the foot of the stairs. I dismount, pay my guide, climb the stairs. 250 of them. Bottom to top without stopping, but breathing damn hard when I arrive.

It's nothing but rock and grit up here, and sulphur-stinking smoke pushed left, then right by the gusts of wind. Sometimes the view is obscured, sometimes clear. I'm alone up here. Nice. No nodding and grinning and small talk with other tourists, no waiting for people to clear out of the way so I can take pictures. Freedom of movment and choice.

The outside of the volcano is rough, scaly, broken, sloping down in whorls and folds to the lakebed. The inside of the crater is much more regular, almost smooth except that it's deply striated by nearly straight fissures that run from rim down to crater floor a couple of hundred metres below. It looks something like a giant bowl for making moulded jellied salad. The colour is grey and pale grey. On the crater floor the fissures widen a little, curve and wrap around each other. White smoke pumps out gently in a rising, twisting column pushed by the wind, dispersing into an amorphous cloud as it rises. It smells powerfully of sulphur, of the earth's burning innards.

Opposite me, above the rim in the distance stand peaks and from behind Mount Semeru into the blue sky rises a truly impressive column of volcanic smoke, white and dark grey. I turn to look at the other cone, or dome actually, standing adjacent to this crater. It looks like the inverse of the crater. Narrow, roundish/flattish top, sharp ridges running top to bottom like ventilating flanges on a rotating motor. In fact, it looks as if this were once part of the crater that, long ago, the crater spit out in a gentle Ptui! and it flipped over while airborne. It looks like a plug standing upside down next to its drain, capable of mating smoothly.

I look back to where I'd started. It's green over there and the village sits on the rim of the large crater like a collection of little boxes. I return to gazing into the crater. There's something magnetic about it, like a waterfall or a campfire. It's so...fundamental. I'm waiting for something to happen, to hear the first rumblings, see the first hint of red/orange lava. Try to run down those stairs, gallop across the lakebed, scramble up to the village, grab any vehicle before this baby really blows.... Fat chance. Naahhhh, I just want to see a bit of lava boiling harmlessly down there, but it's gotta be a long, long way below the crater's bottom.

The wind has covered me in grit and dust that's permeated my clothing thoroughly. Dust clouds push across the lakebed and I've had enough. I'm dirty, thirsty and tired. I've spent less than an hour up here, but don't need to stay longer. Back down the stairs, prepared to cross the lakebed, a guy with a motorcycle offers me a lift. Motorcycle? How did this get down here? There's a 4X4, too. Gotta be a road somewhere, why didn't the park attendant who took my entrance fee tell me? Motorcycle takes me back to the village.

I eat lunch there, then look for a bemo. Driver's helper says we'll go when full, maybe in around 16h00. I see another bemo down the street, ask him what about that one? No, he says, we go first. It's 13h30 and this place feels like it's on Valium. I go to check out the other bemo and the guy follows me, wants to know where I'm going. I smell a very large rat. There are five or six people near this bemo but none near the other one. Probolinggo? I ask. Nobody seems to understand even though the concept is simple. Suddenly there's activity. Everyone scrambles to climb aboard and I join them. We pull out, leaving the other bemo's liar of an assistant behind.

A hundred metres down the road an old man flags us down. He's got two goats with him. Driver's assistant and old man talk, assistant confers with driver, driver says something, more discussion, then goats are hauled onto the roff of the bemo and lashed down, minus the old man. It's a delivery job. Halfway to Probolinggo we slow and stop at someone's house, unload the bleating, kicking goats.

Back in Probolinggo as I'm riding along in a local bemo back to my hotel I get out RP 4 000 to pay but some ladies tell me it only costs three. I thank them and they smile conspiratorially with me, knowing the driver would try to cheat me. They get off before I do and the driver says that my hotel is beyond the end of his route and he's got to go extra distance for me so I have to pay RP 4 000. This is clearly bullshit and when I get off at my stop I hand him 3 000 and walk away. He calls out to me. I look at him with a grin and keep going. He's got half a grin on his face, as if to say What the hell...just trying...you expect me to, don't you?

By now I guess I do.

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Photos

Cemoro Lawang
Colourful little houses.

Mount Bromo
The view of the caldera from the village of Cemoro Lawang.

Mount Bromo
Another view of the caldera from Cemoro Lawang.

Lava lakebed
Note the Hindu temple.

Mount Batok
Sits beside Mount Bromo (the active volcano) inside the caldera.

Two plumes
The view into the crater, with its plume of smoke and another in fthe distance behind the hills.

Travellin' goats
Lashed to the roof of the bemo.