Sorry for the Group Email

By the time we got off the bus at Mount Bromo, it would have been entirely understandable if we’d got into our room, dropped our bags and curled up in bed. We’d been traveling for 31 hours and, despite some stiff competition, it had been one of the worst days we’d endured so far.

But we didn’t go to bed. As we stepped out of the restaurant of the Cemoro Indah hotel, we were greeted by a scene that would be an appropriate setting for the end of the world. In front of us stretched the Tenger massif crater, a perfectly smooth, perfectly dead landscape. After the heat and demands of Lombok and Bali, it felt like we were at the top of the world, and temperature was closer to freezing than it had been since we were in Beijing. We had driven through the mountains for hours, the air cooling and the mist closing in as we wound our way up. As we stood on the precipice of the crater there was no sound: Cemoro Lewang has no major roads running past it, no major urban centre and, apparently, no flight paths over the top of it. The soundless, motionless panorama in front of us had only one major feature.

Mount Bromo itself is an active volcano. So active, in fact, that in 2004 it erupted, firing rocks the size of football into the air and hurling them hundreds of feet across the floor of the crater, killing two tourists and injuring five others. It’s mostly a fairly peacable rock - scientists predict with relatively high degrees of accuracy the odds of it going off an a given day, so we took our chances.

There are steps carved into its side, but with only around 230 steps it’s not impressively high – indeed, from the edge of the crater we were definitely higher. But it isn’t its scale. Apart from the steam surging from the mouth of the volcano, the feeling was one of total desolation and desertedness. The few other backpackers in the restaurant felt like co-explorers on the face of the moon.

So we could have gone to bed. Instead, we found our way to our room (which, as an incidental aside, had no heating or hot water: optimistic considering the chilly weather) and unpacked our winter gear, crammed in the bottoms of our bags since China. Thermal gear, outer layers, the whole lot came out, and we strode down into the landscape.

The volcanic soil in the crater was incredibly fine and got on everything, and we reveled in being totally alone. After 31 hours of non-stop dance music and the frustrations of Bali and Lombok’s tourist centres it was bliss. We climbed to the top of the volcano and peered apprehensively in.

The steam poured out and obscured the bottom of the crater. If you fell in with enough momentum you’d be swallowed by the steam entirely and, not being experts in volcanic anatomy, we stayed well away from the edge. (We later this image on Wikipedia, which indicates that you’d hit the bottom with a thud rather than falling to the centre of the earth. We didn’t chance it, though.) We did, however, find some well-sized rocks, which we heaved in. They vanished into the steam and, when we listened keenly, we could hear them thudding down the sides of the crater, towards stillness and God knows what. The steam itself overpoweringly foul: it smelled approximately the same as what would happen if you combined every secondary stink bomb ever released in a breaktime hallway and released them in reeking chorus. The air stung our noses and throats.

We hadn’t slept the night before, but we set our alarm for 4:30 the next morning. Mount Bromo at sunrise was reported to be one of the most impressive sights the world has to offer, and I was damned if I’d travelled for a day and a half over three islands to a thumping backdrop of Indonesian techno to miss out.

The alarm trilled while it was still dark. I hit snooze.

Luckily, Mendy’s made of sterner stuff, and so it was that we re-donned our winter gear and headed out into the dark. We’d organised a thermos from the hotel kitchen the night before, and we sipped still-warm tea as, breath visible, we wandered down the road.

Mount Bromo has a number of famous observation posts, the first of which is a simple 2km hike through a village (although at the time, being pitch black, we didn’t see it) to an observation point that used to be a carpark. We reached the first point in less than half an hour, just as the sun was rising. In Cemoro Lewang the sun rises over the town, before angling down into Tennger massif and Mount Bromo. The top of Mount Bromo, steam perpetually rushing from its crater, was capped with gold when we reached the carpark, and the rest of Tennger massif was a perfect sea of black. It was not unlike, I imagine, breathing and gravity aside, what sunrise would be like on the moon.

From there we left the trail and headed up Mount Penanjakan. This is still a national park – there were carefully-chiselled steps and signposts, but we ducked under trees and scrambled up landslides on our way to the top. 45 minutes later we reached the top of the trail. The sun was nearly fully up, and the valley below was lit. We were the only ones there.

From there, we needed to go back. Our bus to Yogyakarta, our pitstop on the way to Jakarta, left at nine, and packing and breakfast would account for the rest of our time in Cemoro Lewang. It was at this point that I felt the itch I’d felt at a few places. From the viewpoint on Penanjakan it’s possible to continue climbing, reaching a ridge a few hundred metres higher, and continuing along it for a few kilometres, before descending back into the crater and hiking 8km back to Cemoro Lewang. There are a multitude of hiking possibilities at Mount Bromo, ranging from a few hours to a few days, and it was a lesson in frustration to see a tiny slice of such an improbable landscape and not be able to explore it properly.

From Cemoro Lewang we climbed into another minibus, which took us back to Probolingo. From there we endured a few minutes of the kind of frustration and confusion that came to characterise our Asian travelling experiences. We were dropped at a ticket agent, and eagerly waved our handwritten tickets for Yogyakarta in front of him. He eyed them curiously and gestured us down the road to another agent.

We glanced at each other apprehensively. We’re good sports though, so we headed to the next agent, prepared to battle for our right to sit on a crowded, overcooled bus with thumping music for nine hours to Yogyakarta.

(The tedium of remembering how to spell and type “Yogyakarta” means I’ll be abbreviating to the widely-accepted “Yogya” from now on. Incidentally, you pronounce “Yogyakarta” “Jogjakarta”, in case it comes up in conversation at the pub and you want to look smart.)

What happened next was astonishing.

The next travel agent grinned broadly and waved grandly towards a brand new minibus with tinted windows. He heaved the boot open and we deposited our dusty, dirty bags on a pristine carpet.

Ah-ha, we thought. The minibus will take us to the bus station a few kilometres down the road, and we’ll get on a proper bus from there.

“This will take you all the way,” said the agent.

We boarded apprehensively, and the driver climbed into his seat. We pulled away from the kerb, and the driver told us Yogya was 400km and nine hours away.

This was confusing. Where were the other people? Where were the boxes of eggs? Where was, as we’d experienced with many of our other bus rides, the hours of circling our departing town, avoiding going anywhere until every seat was full? The air conditioning was set to a normal temperature. The stereo remained mercifully silent. At one point we stopped to pick up an Indonesian chap who carried a woven bag containing a live rooster, but that was the extent of the delays.

Problem was, we couldn’t relax to enjoy the trip. We were waiting for the other boot to drop; the van to break down, the sudden arrival of the rooster’s extended family, or for the driver to drive quietly down a city alley and murder us in a scrapyard.

None of it happened. We arrived an hour late, less than ten metres from the hotel we planned to stay at. The travel agent at whose shop we stopped in Yogya offered us a few tours and took “no” for an answer.

Our hotel had a clean room, an en-suite toilet and a swimming pool. It also had a restaurant that sold stunning food and the only good cups of coffee we’d had since leaving Laos.

We slept early and well. We didn’t set an alarm.

Dave recommends volcanoes. I’ve added Bromo to our list of places we’ll be going back to. More pictures, should you be able to bear it, in the Flickr set.