East Java - Bromo

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Another epic journey, but at least this one went pretty smoothly, just 10 hours and we nearly died on several occasions with our MAD mini van driver, who overtook anything and everyone, even when there was a extra large and fast lorry coming the other way, even Stu was holding on!

But we arrived up high in the mountains around 9pm, checked into our home stay, which was very basic but fine for a nights sleep, well i say a night, it was about 5hours.

We had a VERY early wake up call 3.30am to leave for the volcano at 4am, we had a 4x4 Land Cruiser Jeep, which took us right up to the top for a viewing point for sunrise and it was amazing (too many tourists though!), we were at 2770m up. The sun came and the whole landscape came alive, every 30mins or so an active volcano burped a large amount of smoke and ash, pretty spectacular to watch. It was pretty cold and quite windy, Stu and I don't have any warm clothes left, as these all got sent home earlier in China, so we made do with what we had, but Stu made the BIG mistake and only wore his walking sandals, so his toes turned blue.

After here we were take down to the base of Bromo (2392m), the active Volcano, but a midget compared to the other ones around, rising from the guts of the ancient Tenggar caldera, Bromo is one of the three volcanoes to have emerged from a vast crater, stretching 10km across. Flanked by the peaks of Kursi(2581m) and Batok (2440m) the steaming cone of Bromo stands in a sea of ash and volcano sand, surrounded by the towering cliffs of the craters edge.

There were loads of horses, which can take you most of the way up, but some of them didn't look well fed, so we chose not to be lazy and walk it, it wasnt so much that it was hard work, but walking in sand/ash adds to it. I (Lisa) fell over a large rock (it was the same colour as the sand honest!), straight on my front, covered the camera in sand, whoops! It really smelt of eggs (Sulphur) at the top, made Stu and I sneeze constantly until we got to the bottom again. The views were stunning, it reminded us a bit of Mongolia when we went to the national park.

We headed back to our home stay at 8am for some breakfast, and back in a minivan heading for Bali. We had another EPIC trip, we left the mountain at 9am, was taken to an office in Probolinggo, to wait for the next bus, but we where then told this wasn't coming, we will have to catch a local bus (which means this stops to pick up and drop off locals all the way), but after a long day, we got the ferry port, where there was a fight between the bus drivers, looked good but had no idea what was being said. Crossed to Bali by ferry (got our photos taken by the security on his mobile to show his mates, very strange!) we then got a motorbike taxi to Lovina (Bali) which took one hour, it was quite painfull on the old back side.

Good Bye Java, Hello Bali!

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