Ijen
The drive to Ijen was a lot easier than the one to Bromo. It was quite relaxing I must say. There were only few cars on the road and we were either driving through rice fields or along the beach. We made it to our hotel at 6pm. However, I had decided to see the “blue lights” at Ijen which means that my next hike was going to start at 12.30am. So I went straight to bed and got a few hours of sleep.
I actually had never started a hike this early and it was really hard to get out of bed at midnight. We first hiked for a few hours up to Ijen and then hiked down the crater. The conditions at Ijen were even harsher than at Bromo. It was freezing cold, the wind was blowing very strongly and at times it even rained. Ijen is a volcano where people extract sulfur. So along our hike up, we saw workers sleeping at the side of the path. They were all bundled together, didn’t have a blanket and it was raining on them. I felt quite sorry for them.
As we were hiking down the crater, it got warmer but we also had to deal more and more with sulfur smoke. Most of the time, the wind was blowing in the other direction, so we just got a little smoke. But whenever the wind turned, we were all lying on the ground coughing and rubbing our eyes.
Once we reached the bottom of the crater, we could see the blue fire. What happens is that at night, the burning sulfur looks like blue fire. It was quite impressive and I spent at least 15 min looking at the fire despite the harsh sulfur smoke.
Once we got back up the crater, it was 6am and we were supposed to watch sunrise. But the weather was so bad and cloudy that day, that we couldn’t see any sunrise. We couldn’t even look into the crater. This was a shame since there was supposed to be a lake inside of the crater. Regardless, we enjoyed hiking in that area and stayed for another few hours before descending back to the entrance of the park where our bus was waiting for us.
We then embarked on a bus/ferry ride to Bali. Both, Bromo and Ijen, were stunning in their own way. It was impressive to see the moon landscape around the volcanoes and experience the harshness of this environment. But by the end of those 3 days I was completely exhausted. My body didn’t know anymore what time it was and I couldn’t wait to get to a shower…
See more pictures here.