Gunung Ijen

28/01/13 to 29/01/13 – From Bromo we managed to find a minibus which was going to take a Malaysian couple and a Canadian couple to Bali via the Ijen Crater. We negotiated a bit with the driver and managed to jump in with them (with a nights accommodation included in the price). We spent a sweaty 8 hours on the minibus travelling down the mountain to Probolinggo and then back up the mountain to a homestay at Camitor, where there was a coffee plantation, a waterfall and hot springs… and bedbugs. Before the little critters had gorged themselves, we had a dip in the very hot springs, before chatting to some other people at the homestay who’d seen the crater the previous morning. We were very tired after our early start and long journey and decided against another early start, preferring to delay our trip to the crater until the next day. That night Dave got eaten again (apparently they love the B+ blood group).

We spent the next day catching up on sleep, doing washing and relaxing around the village as we knew we’d need to be up very early the next morning. We’d chosen to leave for the crater at 1am (as opposed to 4am) as the experience was more spectacular in the dark. Our driver took us another hour up the mountain to a couple of huts where we would begin our trek up the volcano. It was a steep uphill climb for about an hour to get to the crater rim. In the moonlight we could see the silhouettes of neighbouring volcanoes against a clear, starry sky. The altitude took our breath away and we struggled to hike it up to the summit at around 2400m. We made it to the rim of the crater where we saw the huge plume of sulphurous smoke billowing out of the crater below. We were not sure if we’d be able to see anything.

As we made our way down, we passed several sulphur miners, who were carrying buckets down into the crater to fill with sulphur rocks. Each miner would then carry up around 80kg back up to the rim and down to the bottom of the volcano. It looked like a horrendous job, as they had to breathe the sulphur fumes and carry a huge weight uphill on their shoulders. Each day they do 2 trips there and back, and earn around £7 or £8 per day. Remarkably they were friendly and seemed in good spirits as they worked, constantly singing and cracking jokes with each other. 

We walked down into the crater for about 20minutes, as far as we could safely go, and we saw an amazing sight. In the darkness appeared several clusters of blue flames (that looked a bit like huge propane flames from the gas cooker). This was the sulphur gas rising up out of the rocks below. Luckily the wind was blowing the smoke away from us for most of the time, but once the wind turned and the foul, incredibly strong eggy smell came straight at us. We turned away and tried to breathe in between the plumes, but we couldn’t help but breathe some of the gas. The wind turned again and we were fine again. The miners were still digging away at the yellow rocks below us, unphased by the smoke. We felt like we were in a scene from Star Trek as the crater itself looked like an alien world in the moonlight.

As the sun rose, we began to see the outline of the acid crater lake. As more and more light poured in from behind the ridge we could see the amazing turquoise blue colour, and the outline of the shore. Then finally we saw the reflection of another volcano in the lake. The picture was complete and we stood in disbelief. We must have taken nearly a thousand pictures as we tried to capture the moment to keep with us.

Eventually we had to come up as the sulphur fumes were getting stronger and the wind turned on us once again. As we climbed we continued to stop to take yet more pictures as we saw burnt out trees, lava rivers and impossibly coloured rocks. We reached the rim and saw an amazing panorama of the valley below, with the sea with Bali in the distance behind yet more volcanoes. We hadn’t planned to come here, we just stumbled across it on our way east through Java, but it was one of the highlights of our trip so far. We descended back down the outside of the volcano and saw some black monkeys on the way. At the bottom our driver was waiting for us and we said thanks to the guides and the miners for such a great experience. Then we made our way to the ferry port at Ketapong to catch a ferry to Bali. It was still only 9am.