Day 2: sunrise at Bromo

Maybe the jet lag helped me to wake up on time for our 2:30am departure. We left the hotel on time, together with many other guests doing the same tour. It was 13C, quite chill. We arrived at the starting place, had hot chocolate at 3:30am, waiting for 4am hike to start. We were both excited for the adventure to come, although a bit sleepy.

The hike up was not long, maybe 30 min or so, with only 10 min of steep hill. We got to the view point 4:30am, found a good spot and waited. It was quite chill with the wind even thought we both had 4 layers on the top and 2 layers of pants. We are so not used to the cold after living in tropical country for 6 years. By 5:15am, the viewpoint was full of people, waiting for the magic to appear in front of our eyes.

The view to the mount bromo was beautiful, surreal. It would have been perfect if less tourists, but also would be a pity if not many people get to witness it.

Mount Bromo is an active volcano. It is one of the most visited tourist attractions in all of East Java and even Java itself.

Mount Bromo lies in the middle of a huge crater called the ‘Sea of Sand’, which is a protected reserve. There are a total of five volcanoes inside the crater including Mount Bromo (2,329m), Mount Batok (2,470 m), Mount Kursi (2,581 m), Mount Watangan (2,661 m), and Mount Widodaren (2,650 m). We visited viewpoints on Mount Penanjakan that look back into the crater and towards Bromo

After a quick descend, we got into our jeep, path through sea of sands, to start 40 min trekking to the crater rim. One can choose to ride ponies to go to the top, which is really not the way it is supposed to be. The ponies are not treated nicely and I felt the urge to yell at the riders. The hike was steep but really not hard. We took it slow as we could feel air became a bit thinner, so breathing was harder than usual. The sun came out by then, we stopped several times to take off our layers.

final ascent had stairs. Look how crowded it was. This is one of the popular destinations in Java, and it was a public holiday, so quite busy day.

and the crater with smoke coming out. It is totally safe to visit as it’s highly monitored by the government.

after we got down, we took pic with our jeep before going back to the hotel. We were full of sand and our nails went black

We had quick breakfast at our hotel, very basic food with too many people. We packed up and checked out 10:30am as we needed to move to our next hotel near Ijen. We both dozed off during our 4 hrs drive. I was half asleep most of the time. As we passed through mountains, with many turns, Sofia felt nauseas sometimes, otherwise she listened to podcasts and the drive went pretty fast. I was happy to have brought apples, bars and dry fruits for our rides as there were no decent food near by. It is not like Bali with tons of foreign tourists and food availability was not that great if one doesn’t like local fried food.

We got to our hotel, Ijen view by 2:30pm. Another basic hotel which I was secretly glad because we usually stay in very nice hotels and my girls are quite spoiled and think that’s the norm.

Sofia took a nap while I had a full body massage. Then we went out for dinner at a local restaurant. The food was not very good, we were both tired and without appetite. We got back to the room and light off by 7pm again, fully ready to sleep.