An early start up Gunung Bromo {Cath}

---

Unfortunately most of our trip up to Bromo National Park from Probalingo was done by cover of night. By the amount of times we had to pop our ears we knew that we were high up and still climbing, that, and the fact that there seemed to be a sharp drop off the side of the road (*eek!*). Our driver did manage to wiggle us up the mountain in one piece though.

We stayed at a place called "Cafe Lava Hostel" in Chumora Lewang which was, aside from the Manohara at Borobudur, the best room we've had! The room is cosy and the bed has wonderful thick covers (You really need them!), and as it was still low season, we got breakfast included 😊 (Rp135 000) We slept really well that night, and it was a good thing too, if we were going to be up in time for sunrise over Bromo! 😊

After our freezing hour early summit on Mt. Kinabalu {Darrell} in Malaysia, we were going to make sure it didn't happen again, and set our alarms for 4:30, allowing us an hour to get to the summit.
On the amble there, I commented to Darrell that I wasn't sure what all the fuss was about with Bromo. It did after all look like a very small volcano ahead of us... He turned, looked at me, and said, "you do know that Bromo is actually a small volcano inside a very big one, don't you..." and as I looked around at the high circle of mountains around us... and the very flat expanse of black sand under my shoes, and I remembered all the climbing we did in the van to get here, my feet went cold. We were in the middle of the caldera of a very very very big volcano, trying to get to the top of the smaller volcano inside the volcano..... AAAAAHHHH!!!

Unfortunatly we had cut it a little fine, and ended up having to run across the last of the crater to try to reach Bromo's peak in time. We just made it... A few moments after we reached the top, the sun started rising above the eastern crater wall in bright golds and yellows.

'Little' Bromo itself is also something to behold. As you peer down into the crater mouth, you see large cracks to the center of the earth, continuously blowing steam up into the sky, you feel small.

On the way back down Darrell casually threw a stone into the center of the volcano and glibly remarked, "what if it blocks on of the vents..."

---

Comments

[Anne Mom]

looking for a BIG bang
are you surprised that Darrell would be hopeful that a small stone would get stuck in a vent and cause a big firey bang??