I’m glad I took my time in Yogyakarta, to have a full experience of the area’s sights and culture. Still, I was ready to keep moving, if only to try once again to escape the smoggy skies in search of somewhere more breathable. It was time to continue east, on a quest to experience some of nature’s greatest hits.
With so much distance between things, I booked a 4-day budget tour with the company YKExplore. I couldn’t help but compare it to the wonderful experience I had with G Adventures in Turkey, where everything was highly organized and efficient with our guide telling us basic info like how long we’d be driving at a time.
Maybe you can guess that I was not the biggest fan of this company and the organization. Think barely any communication about pick up times and locations, inexplicably waiting around all the time, insane Javanese driving patterns that barely observe lane lines, waiting in long lines for gas with 10 people in a van without offering to let us stretch our legs, shitty hotels, no dinner options or suggestions, cigarette smoke everywhere including indoors and on hikes, and a roommate who was talking to her boyfriend on the phone while I tried to go to sleep. Oh, and mix in morning meeting times of 5:30am, then 1:45am, then 12:20am. It was a challenging couple of days and I ended them a little worse for wear, scraped knee, messed up stomach, tired muscles, and deep exhaustion.
Still, the company got me where I wanted to go, and the nature experiences were truly phenomenal. And as I constantly remind myself, riding with challenge is all part of the travel experience; it’s where the growth happens.
I shared the tour experience with some kind and quiet people – two Italian guys and my Taiwanese roommate, and a group of 4 young French guys who mostly kept to themselves, plus two others who would rotate in and out of our van. There were other vans doing similar trips as ours, so at some destinations we would have a group of 60 people, making it a little chaotic. Our driver Beng Beng drove like a lunatic but so did everyone else, so I sort of got used to it.
After a full day of driving, we settled into a northern town called Probolinggo, of which all I saw was a busy smoky road with a store and some street food options. The call to prayer from the nearby mosque was extremely loud, and woke us up nice and early at 3:30am the next day. In the evening I could see they were letting young children practice their singing into the microphone. Again, just pushing through the challenges.
The next morning entailed a 3 hour drive to the Tumpak Sewu waterfall. As I was grappling with whether 6+ hours in a van was worth it to see one waterfall, I noticed the skies clearing up as we climbed a winding mountain road, and as we stepped outside and met our local guides I found my mood finally lightening up.
Water shoes on, intense bug spray applied, and phone in pocket, we walked down a sidewalk to the first viewpoint, and ok, it was pretty great. Wide and horseshoe-shaped with many narrow and dense cascades, and 120 meters tall, surrounded by lushness. It was crowded with people taking pictures, but we soon left for the next stop: a 20-minute walk down steep metal stairs into the mouth of the waterfall, lots of walking through water and then over wobbly wood bridges. This spot was incredible, mist spraying all around and the noisy power of the falls echoing around. Everyone lined up for our guides to take amazing photos, with other groups doing the same all over the place.
We continued the hike through some quieter areas, walking through water and at one point under a powerful waterfall to “get a massage.” Our final stop was a cave we could swim through, though it was unclear what this meant until we were right up to the narrow hole in the rock that we had to squeeze through before sliding into a neck-high pool, then navigating back out the other side. It was very cool. Later, our lunch spot had terrible service but beautiful views of a volcano, Semeru, that would emit a small eruption every 15 minutes.
The next day, I was reeling from a dream I had about going back to work for my old employer from a decade ago and being really happy about it, leaving me starting the thought process I had hoped to delay about my future once my travels conclude. Sleep deprivation, nature, and exhaustion might have been working some weird magic on me.
I actively pushed those thoughts away as we arrived in a mountain town for our exploration day at Mount Bromo, a famous volcano. Jeeps drove us partway up the hill, before we hopped out and walked the rest of the way up the steep cement hill and stairs in the dark, peaking at 8,000 feet in elevation which made for nice cool air. We paused for a coffee break in the middle at a viewpoint, though it was still pitch black so I could barely tell we were overlooking a massive crater under the stars. As we reached the highest point and navigated the crowds, the sky began to lighten, and the first views of the massive crater emerged, spread out like a valley. Two mountainous craters were inside the larger one, one of them emitting periodic smoke. The larger crater was filled with cloudy fog, making for an otherworldly view.
Sunrise complete, we hopped back in the jeeps and drove down into the crater, right into that cloudy expanse we were just observing. By now the fog had lifted, and we were in a sea of volcanic sand and bumpy road-less driving. We walked through the sand to the base of Bromo Crater — the one we had seen emitting smoke, and then began to climb up to the rim, a difficult uphill walk of just about a half hour. It was dusty and sandy, made worse by people who chose to ride horses up the path, and the last spot was all concrete stairs. That crater view was wild, rugged and yellows and greens that would sometimes start smoking, and then you’d realize it was sulphur and have to turn around until the wind blew the other way.
After some more driving, we relocated to the eastern-most Javanese town of Banyuwangi, of which I only saw the main road (slightly more modern, slightly less smoggy). And then it was time for our final day: Ijen Volcano.
Ijen is known for its unique geological phenomenon of blue flames emanating from the rim of its sulphuric crater lake, which you can only see at night. It was an overwhelming day, and nature being nature, I did not get to see the flames, except for a small area the guides manufactured so you could walk up to see it. Still, the crater offered some of the most unique nature I’ve ever experienced.
It was an insanely early morning, and once again my ears popped as we climbed uphill to start our trek. My ear infection from nearly two weeks ago has left a lingering hollowness; I felt certain the fresh air would help. We arrived at basecamp, a small restaurant where we got powdered sugary coffee. It was cold but manageable in all my layers. Our large group were all given headlamps and a gas mask, an essential contraption that I came to really enjoy, not just for the dangerous sulphuric smoke but also for the constant cigarette smell from the Indonesian guides along the hike.
We began our climb, an uphill sandy flat trail that lasted about two hours. It was so crowded to the point where I was a bit uncomfortable. Guides offered “taxi, taxi; lamborghini!” along the way: mostly Chinese tourists hopping in carts and the men were literally dragging them up and down the hike. It was obnoxious and upsetting to many of us hikers but the guides insist they are good, well-paying jobs, and it’s better than being a sulfur miner.
When we finally reached the crater rim, our guide told us we could walk inside and down halfway or all the way down into the crater, but that it would be crowded. I couldn’t see any blue flames below, just lots of people and headlamps. We all go in, but crowded doesn’t even begin to describe the experience. It entailed waiting shoulder-to-shoulder as a tight bottleneck slowly climbed down, while others tried to climb up, and while sulphur miners yelled out to pass through the crowds to go to work. At one point I tried to lean aside for a miner to pass, but no one else on either side of me moved, and I ended up slipping off a rock and scraping my knee. It all took forever and the sun was already starting to come up.
When we reached the midpoint and the crowds cleared, the guide took a few of us over to a spot where the blue flames were on display, some kind of man-made demonstration. It was very cool! And as the sun came up and we could start to see around us, it turned out we were in an amazingly beautiful crater, surrounded by jagged rocks of whites, tans, and yellows. Down below, natural pipes above the blue crater lake slipped out sulphuric steam, drifting all around. Miners passed back up with their yellow rocks, balanced in two baskets held together by a rod draped over their shoulders. The rocks are sold to make beauty products and such.
I took my time hiking back up, and at the top we got to enjoy a great viewpoint of the rim with some tea the guides had carried up. In the other direction, several volcanic peaks were all around with clouds coating the sky down below. I found myself in a much better mood now that I got to slow down and just enjoy the nature. The walk back down was difficult, and entailed people sliding all over the place, but we survived. I bought a giant coconut from a vendor at the bottom to recharge.
A “breakfast” meal of noodles and eggs at around 10am and then we were off, dropped off at the ferry port with our luggage for a slow and chaotic travel day to the next island that I’d like to forget about. These couple of days, and really all of my 12 days in Java, were truly a blast of culture shock and challenge, with some incredible cultural and natural wonders weaved in. It will take a long time to process but I think it will really make me appreciate the nicer and smoother parts of my travel experience. So at 8pm, I was thrilled to finally arrive at my nice, quiet hotel and was more than ready to relax at my next destination: Bali!
