Bro -mo, Ja-va

We bid farewell to the island of Bali after a harrowing 2 hour minibus ride in the oldest public VW bus imaginable - the driver had to keep his foot on the break while pumping gas, yet another feat of Balinese bendyness. A 45 minute ferry ride (which included air conditioning and loud Indonesian pop music videos) took us to the island of Java. We negotiated hard with the persistent minibus driver (or actually, minibus pimp, since he turned out not to be the driver but simply the face of the driving operation) to take us to Mt. Bromo, an active volcano in Eastern Java. After much haggling, we agreed and set off down the road to Bromo. 4 hours later, we were unceremoniously dropped in Probbolinggo (actual spelling!), still an hour and half down the road from the mountain. We shortly boarded another minibus for Cemora Lawang, the town on the slope of the volcano. After an hour of engine idling on the side of the road, we set off for the mountain, winding along hairpin turns through ridiculously steep farmland that looked more like Peru than Southeast Asia. We made it by sunset and got into a cozy lodge to enjoy our first meal since before 8am - oh, delicious Bintang Beer!

Most people get up before dawn and ride in a jeep or hike a long way to see the sunrise view of the volcano. However, this is the rainy season, and the mountain was totally socked in by fog, so we slept in and got up at a more human 6am for our fog walk up to the crater of the smoking volcano. We felt smug as we traipsed across the lava field, watching tired and disgruntled early risers return to the hotel in the fog. In some ways the fog added to the mythical feeling of climbing an active volcano, or so we told ourselves as we stared into whiteness from the top of the ridiculous stairway. On our way back, the fog cleared and we had some decent views of the volcano and its neighboring mountains. Gunung Bromo (as its called in Bahasa Indonesian) was surprisingly worth the trip, if only for the chance to shiver in the rain instead of sweat in the heat of lowland Java.