Day 74-75 Yogyakarta to Cemorolawang

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Day 74 Yogyakarta to Cemorolawang (Wed 15th Sept)

Early start at 0600 this morning with a packed breakfast again. We left Matt behind to try to find his washing and catch us up at our next stop. The days travel was uneventful and long. The last couple of hours we were going steadily uphill.

In the end we had to leave our coach and load everything onto 2 minibuses to get up the mountains to our next stop, which is right beside Mt Bromo (volcano). We watched the sun set as we made our way up the steep roads and I could understand why we couldn’t come up in the coach. The views were spectacular though.

It even managed to get a bit chilly here, due to the altitude. It was full dark by the time we got to our resort, so we couldn’t see what the views were like but the rooms were nice. We ate at the restaurant there, as the options available in the ‘town’ were rather limited. Actually the town itself was barely there. Anyway the food was good and we enjoyed some more down time.

Working the showers was interesting. You had to turn the gas on (which happened when you turned the tap on) but the flame kept going out and when the flame went out, you had about 5 seconds of hot water before it became freezing. So you had to keep turning the tap on and off to get the gas back on. A pain, but it was cool enough here that a cold shower was out of the question unless absolutely essential.


Day 75 Cemorolawang (Mt Bromo)

We met out front today at 0330 for our sunrise trip. Jo, Ali, Norma, Tomas, Anto and I were the ones who had elected to go on this trip. As we were waiting for our jeep, Matt turned up. He had caught a couple of trains to the nearest town and had then spent the past 1.5 hours on the back of a motorbike to get here. Quite a feat. Since there was still a tiny bit of room in the jeep, he came along with us. And I even had to dig around in my bag for my jacket, which I haven’t worn since before I left Edinburgh in mid June.

We first went up another mountain the name of which I wrote down somewhere but now can’t remember to see the sun rise. It was 2700m above sea level and the moment I stepped out of the jeep I felt ill. It was like gravity had suddenly gotten heavy and I felt like it was pressing me down. I couldn’t hear anything, my vision went blurry, I felt dizzy and I thought I would throw up. I had to lean against a random vehicle for about 10 minutes before I was suddenly fine again as though there hadn’t been anything wrong in the first place. Apparently, that’s the altitude...

Anyway, I did manage to make my way up the 200 or so meters to the lookout point and we saw an absolutely stunning sun rise. It was cloudy below us and the sun itself couldn’t really be seen, but that wasn’t the beautiful bit anyway. It was the way a few bands of light lit up a couple of clouds that held the attention. You could see all the nearby mountain peaks sticking up through the clouds and it was beautiful. The colours kept changing from deep red to orange, to pink, to gold.

We then went back to our jeep to make our way down this mountain to Mt Bromo, the volcano we wanted to climb. I ended up taking a pony up the slopes to the stairway and then walking up the 200 odd steps to the rim of the volcano. It felt like a long way up and you had to be careful at the top. There was a rail around the crowded area to stop you falling in, but nothing to stop you falling out! The rim was very narrow and a couple of times as I was passing someone, they turned around suddenly and knocked me with their shoulder or bag and I had to grab hold of them to stop from falling off the path completely. I would have liked to walk all around the rim but we didn’t have enough time. I just spend about 20 minutes up there before making my way down. At least I didn’t need a pony this time. Down is a lot easier.

I had a quick look at the little Hindu temple at the base before we left around 0830. Hard to believe the day is really only just starting. We got back to the resort in time for breakfast. I spent most of the day sorting out my photo’s and taking a nap. It had been an early start after all. In the early afternoon it started pouring rain so we all sort of hibernated a bit, watching TV and resting.

Dinner tonight was included and we ate at the restaurant. It was nice and the entire group ate together this time which was a bit of a novelty. There are usually 1-2 people missing at least.

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Photos

Sunrise
A stunning display up in the mountains

Sunrise 2
The colours were amazing

Mt Bromo 2
A view from the top of the volcano

Mt Bromo
The volcano

Hindu Temple
A little temple at the foot of Mt Bromo