Volcano Sunrise

Trip Start May 15, 2004

Trip End Aug 20, 2004

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Flag of Indonesia Cemoro Lawang, Indonesia
Tuesday, May 25, 2004

May 24 - ...so I get on the mini bus and after a while we start heading up the mountain. We stop along the way a pick up passengers, mostly school children. The view is amazing and we eventually reach Cemoro Lawang, the mountainside village where there are a few places to stay near the volcano Mt. Bromo. I check in, paying more for a room with a hot shower, and chat with a nice guy from Scotland over breakfast. Then I decided to hike over to the volcano. The area surrounding CL is very mountainous; many trees and green grass (ahhh, how nice grass is...there's practically no grass in Japan, so it's much nicer for me than it would seem to most other people!). As I hiked toward Bromo the scenery changed. Upon passing through a clearing, I came to this view of the volcanoes and a valley and it looked like something I would expect to see on Mars or the Moon! The valley was this dry, dark, scorched sand. The valley is surrounded by beautiful green mountains and then this dry wasteland-like valley appears with 3 short volcanoes in the middle; these huge craters and one (Bromo) has sulfuric smoke billowing out of it

1Village of Cemoro Lawang

. So I walk across the ashy plain and head toward Bromo with the intention of climbing to the top. Well, if you've ever really looked at a volcano, you'll notice how steep the incline is from the bottom to the top! So, after an exhausting climb, I walked the lip of the crater taking pictures, careful of the wind so I didn't inhale a big breath of sulfuric fumes! After playing around a bit, I head back to my room, take an amazing hot shower, read some, mend my shorts, and met a nice couple from Holland, Martina and Franz, and called it an early evening because tomorrow I'll wake up at 3 am so I can hike to this viewpoint for what is supposed to be a beautiful sunrise over the volcano valley!

May 25 - Today I saw the most amazing and beautiful sunrise. I can't even imagine how a sunrise could be more beautiful...as beautiful as the pictures look, they're really nothing compared with seeing it in person.
It was so difficult to wake up at 3 am, but I did and I headed out into the cold by 3:30 am. On the way I overtook Martina and Franz and we all decided to just make our way together. So, we hiked and talked and struggled to keep on the trail and made a few new trails on our own. They're pretty good hikers, but at one point with the sunrise approaching I had to take off on my own to make sure and catch the sunrise

2Mt. Bromo Valley

. I make it to the top, after struggling and hiking for a few hours, only to be joined by late-sleeping visitors who overpaid and took Jeeps to the top for the sunrise. I had to fight through the crowd, but in my mind, I hiked to the top and deserved the view much more than the others there! As the sun rose, it began to light up the crags and crevices and creases on the sides of the volcanoes...a mist covering the valley floor was reflecting the new days sunlight and Mt. Bromo was joined by a for off Mt Semuru in blowing smoke out of the mountaintop making it quite the picture. I bumped into Franz and Martina and we took pictures and enjoyed the view. The sight was on par with the sunrise at the Grand Canyon, but so different with it's strange alien-like atmosphere that I couldn't really compare the two. We just relaxed up there and let the crowd disappear, had a coffee, and hiked down the mountain commenting on how different the view was now compared with hiking it at 4 am! I decided not to stay another night because I wanted to get to Jogjakarta and see some of the oldest Buddhist and Hindu temples in the world. So in the afternoon I took the last mini bus down the mountain...big mistake because being the last bus it was like a sardine can, but I guess that's just normal travel in Indonesia!