Midnight alarms are hard. After very little sleep, we
dragged ourselves out of bed and got ready to leave. We made a quick coffee,
and didn’t really get the time to drink it. Our guide, Aruel and driver had
arrived to collect us. So we were bundled into the back seat of a Triton Ute
and off we went, through the jungle, and up to the base of Mount Ijen. This
took about one and a half hours in the vehicle.
The walk to the crater rim was quite steep, but on a well
made path. It’s a popular trek, and there were others on the path, mostly local
Javanese and a few from other countries.
Also, there were the sulphur miners, heading up with their
trolleys to get another load of newly formed sulphur from the volcanic vents at
the base of the crater. They then carry the sulphur blocks in around seventy
kilogram loads, in two woven baskets and a spreader pole of bamboo to go over
the shoulder. Then it’s up the very steep technical path, to the crater rim.
Here they load the sulphur onto their little trolleys with a drum brake on it,
and guide them down the hill to the road. The round trip is twelve kilometres
with heaps of climbing. They are often wearing thongs as footwear for the
climb. These guys are super human. It’s not for us, to view this as an unworthy
career. In western terms they are paid a pittance for the sulphur. But these
guys have made a decision to take the hard path, in order to provide for their
families. And perhaps more than they can earn from other means, otherwise they
wouldn’t do it.
We continued on our path up to the crater rim, our legs felt
good. The rim tops out at around 2400 metres. We had to put our gas masks on
from here, as the sulphurous smoke from the volcano swirled around us. The path
into the crater is quite hard from here. A loosely made scramble of rocks and
volcanic ash, mixed with occasional light rain made for some slippery spots,
especially as it was pitch dark. When nearing the bottom, we were seeing
glimpses of the blue fire. This occurs as gases escape from vents that instantaneously
combust on contact with the open air. This creates a swirling blue flame as the
gas burns off and it is quite spectacular. This was mixed with the scene of the
miners, working right into the vents, collecting the liquid sulphur as it comes
out and starts to solidify. It reminded me of a childhood scene from the
Brewery Christmas display at the Torrens river near Adelaide. It was a figure
of a man hammering away on an anvil inside a volcano, making thunderous noises.
This was very real however.
We tried to get some photos, but the smoke often thwarted
us. A little later the sky began to lighten and we could start to see the
crater rim above us, outlined against the sky, and the acid lake below us.
Once the sky became light, the blue flames disappeared, so
we headed down closer to the lake for some photos before starting the long
climb back up, always getting out of the way of the miners and their loads as
they make their ascent on the same path.
Once we got back up over the rim with Aruel, we could begin
to see the countryside around us. Magnificent views of the surrounding peaks,
all volcanoes themselves, towering above the jungles below, intermixed with the
occasional coffee plantation. Hmmm, coffee. Time to head down the mountain. We
strolled down, it was a really enjoyable walk, such great views, but we both
had a little knee pain afterwards from the descent. Once again, it’s the going
down that hurts.
Back at the bottom, and into the car, it was time to visit a
nice waterfall on the way back which was cool. Once the guys dropped us back to
our accommodation, we said our thankyous and goodbyes and were delighted to
find that breakfast was on its way. And of course, some great Java coffee. This
was about 9:30am.
We spent the rest of the day in a daze between sleep and
being awake. Chilling out. Unfortunately, Mary had a pretty bad headache for
twenty four hours afterwards, probably the sulphur fumes.
We surfaced around 5pm and ordered a takeaway pizza, smashed
that and went straight back to bed and slept right through the night, until
3:30am. The call for prayer started up,
on three sides, from three different mosques quite close by. All different and
competing with each other in a cacophony of noise, lacking any tone whatsoever.
Believe it or not Banyuwangi has a major UCI cycling event
held every September. It is a 600km road race called ‘Tour De Banyuwangi’. And
the last stage is up the mountain road to the base of Mt Ijen. How punishing
would that climb be? We thought about
riding that road until we were in a vehicle and drove it, and were pretty happy
it was only a thought. It is so steep in sections that even the vehicles
sometimes have problems getting up it.
When we drove up there, a van in front of us had to stop, unload the
passengers to make it lighter to get up the tough pinches. So now we are on the
look out for a Tour De Banyuwangi cycling shirt.
25-01-17
At breakfast we met a lovely elderly lady, Ellen, who was
also staying at the homestay and she was Indonesian but lives in Holland. She
had many great stories to tell us. She was here in Banyuwangi to visit her
children and grandchildren. She walked with a walking stick as she had a skiing
fall recently and hurt her leg. She was sure it wouldn’t stop her getting on a
motor bike later in the day to tour around the village. She was very proud of
turning 80 this year. We really enjoyed listening to her life stories while
sharing breakfast with her which then led to us leaving a little later than
planned.
After saying our goodbyes and having photos taken by our
hosts, we were back on the same road as we travelled in on, as we decided with
consultation with our guide Aruel to head on up the north side to Mt Bromo,
instead of tackling it from the south side. So we had to go back 11km’s to the
port area where we started from. We took a short cut that ended up being 3k’s
longer but at least it was in the right direction. Here we could see Bali across
the straight once again.
It was a really enjoyable ride following the coast most of
the way. We were only about 5km’s away from our next homestay in Banyuputih
when the rain started. It totally bucketed down, so we took shelter under the
veranda of a small shop. Here we waited for it to ease, and once it lightened
off we jumped back on the bikes. After only a short few k’s it dropped its
bundle once again, this time even heavier. We could see a group of people and
motorbikes sheltering under a small roofed area so decided to join them. Here
we waited it out for another good half hour. While waiting we were trying to
scope out a place to stay. We found a cheap, hostel style place on Airbnb that
was only a few k’s up the road. We decided to go with that, as the rain didn’t
look like it was going to let up. Finally, it was light enough to ride in, but
the road was just a stream with deep puddles and pot holes full of running
water. We decided to go for it.
Within a few minutes the rain got really heavy again, it was
a real fight with the traffic, everyone trying to avoid the puddles. This
practice is really important as there are a lot of really large potholes, so if
you can’t see the road surface through the water, you mustn’t ride through it
or it will get ugly really quick.
We arrived at the turn off and finished the last kilometre
to our homestay, just across the road from a national park. We met the ladies
and gentleman who run the homestay and a very little, attached Warung. They
weren’t expecting us, but that was ok, they showed us into a room, and after we
had a shower, they brought us coffee and fried banana. It was great.
We were getting a bit suspicious about the payment for the
room. To cut a long story short, the owners son, who set up the Airbnb account,
didn’t tell his parents. It took a lot of phone calls and messaging to sort it
out. Mummy was not impressed with her son.
Meanwhile a nice French couple, John and Anna, checked in as
well and we chatted with them for a while and decided to find some dinner
together. Then the rain started again, the owner’s warung was closed. We tried
to get the old fella to understand that we wanted to find a close warung, so he
rang up his wife and got her to come back (she had gone out) and open the
warung to make us dinner. This really wasn’t what we wanted, but by the time we
understood what had happened we didn’t have a choice, without seeming like
horrible people.
Then we had to explain that Mary was vegetarian and once she
understood that, she took me out into the kitchen to show me a pot of what
turned out to be beef stew. The rest of us had a choice, beef stew and rice, or
nothing. We agreed that we would try it. I have no idea what it was called, but
despite the little chunks of beef being very chewy, it was ok. It did have
flavour. Mary ended up with rice and a few leftover bits of fried tofu and some
peanuts. At least the company was awesome.
26-01-17
We woke up early, had a cup of coffee and got out of here as
quick as possible. We skipped breakfast, as we thought that we would stop early
to get some somewhere else. But straight away, the road started heading up
through the National park, climbing all the way. It turned out that there were
no warungs for the first thirty kilometres or so, and the first twelve of that
was all up, not steep, but enough to make you work for it. We had to stop and
help a guy who had come off his motorbike with a big load of grass on the back.
I helped him unload it and get his bike upright again, he was ok. It was only
after heading off, that I realised he had got his load of goat fodder from in
the national park, this seems quite normal. The ride up this long hill was
beautiful, riding with the national park on both sides of us. The traffic was busy
but very friendly with lots of waves, smiles, laughter, hello’s and thumbs up
from the passing traffic. We pulled over at one point for a drink stop and a
lovely old guy on a motor bike travelling the other way did a u turn and came
up to us to have a chat. He didn’t know much English but we chatted anyway. We
did however find out that there was more climbing to be done and he was spot on
with that one. There were lots of monkeys on the side of the road with lots of
really cute little babies hanging on to their mothers for dear life.
By the time we found somewhere to eat it was just an Indomart,
Indonesia’s answer to 7eleven. We just got a packet of biscuits, and a lemonade
and sat on the front steps and smashed them. Not very healthy, but calories were
needed quick. We headed on and finally came into the big smoke, Situbondo. The
road diverts around a big central market, where Mary found a stall selling
trimmed pineapples. She had to wake up the store keeper who was having a little
nap in order to buy one. We then sat in
the gutter and ate the delicious juicy pineapple while working out somewhere to
stay. This was proving difficult, but it was only lunchtime, we had plenty of
time to find something. We did the lap around the market, and found a nice café
with free wifi, so we could relax, eat some more food and find somewhere to
stay. This was a cool place, a bit like a chain store café, probably modelled
on a starbucks or something, but the coffee was really good.
We found that there was a hotel about two k’s further down
the road so we went there to see what the rates were like. It was within our
budget, so we got the room and headed for the cold shower.
We got chatting with a lovely Indonesian couple who live in
Sydney who had come back to Java to sell their family property. Alex was a very
kind man whose auntie owned the motel. He ordered us coffee and sat with us and
chatted for over an hour. Naomi, his wife was a really lovely lady too and we
had some good conversations with them both. We had an early dinner in the
restaurant and then headed back to our room for a good night’s sleep.
27-01-17
Our room rate included breakfast in the restaurant and we
were lucky that the waiter offered us a western breakfast of toast and jam plus
an omelette. When ordering coffee in Java, you do need to ask for no sugar, as
it regularly comes potent with sugar. We enjoyed our breakfast, the bikes were
all ready to go, so we pushed them up through the foyer and outside into the
car park. Here we met Alex and Naomi who both wished us safe travels and waved
us goodbye.
Yesterday we had the great joy of a head wind and today it
decided to continue and blow right into us. We rode again following the coast
road which was a really nice ride but again very busy traffic. The traffic now
seems to be busy and a little more crazy, but we still feel safe out there and
everyone just goes around us. The large buses however have a different set of
rules. They don’t like to slow down, they bulldoze their way through the traffic
and only give you the bare minimum of room as they pass. As we approached one
very large town, the traffic was chaotic. The local passenger bus frequently
stopping to drop off passengers via the back door and picking up new passengers
via the front. The conductor, I suppose that’s what you would call him, often
let people off as the bus was still moving. He smiled and laughed each time we
caught up with him. We are now seeing more and more bike passenger carts, we think
they are called becak/pedi-cabs, many taking a full load of kids off to school.
Push bikes are increasing too with many being ridden by old guys heading off to
the rice fields and some even being ridden with loads of freshly cut grass on
them heading back to feed their livestock.
We approached our accommodation for the night, a petrol
station!! This was a really new complex that caters for the masses travelling
by motorcar and buses from Jakarta to Bali and vise versa. There are two cafes,
a large two story rest area, a supermarket, fuel pumps, a restaurant and brand
new rooms down the back. Our budget room was clean and tidy but only had cold
water. You have to pay extra for rooms with hot water, so we are making do with
the cold showers for now. After a refreshing rinse and scrub we headed outside
to go for a walk and look around. We tried to get down to the beach to check it
out, but there was a lot of building going on and we couldn’t get through. As
we started to walk back up towards the main road, two motorbikes with 5 kids
rode through the premises. They were laughing and carrying on, looking a bit
like they were up to no good. They too couldn’t get down to the beach, and rode
up to us, stopped their bikes, introduced themselves, shook hands with us, and
wanted a ‘portrait’ taken with themselves standing next to us all in good fun.
They were not much older than about 12 years old and were so excited getting a
photo taken and chatting with us, they rode off with shouts of joy.
We continued on our walk up to the main road and ventured
out on foot. It was a totally different feeling walking this main highway on
foot. Even though we walked on the side of the road we really felt that it was
a lot safer out here on a bike. We got lots of hello’s, waves and smiles from
school kids waiting for their bus, from little kids playing in their front
yards and from lovely families hanging out on their front porches watching us
as we walked past. We really must look very different, as even walking we
created a lot of attention.
We had an early dinner in one of the cafes at the complex
and headed off to bed early once again.
28-01-17
Despite the location of the hotel, it turned out to be nice
and quiet, a good sleep was had. We loaded the bikes and rode over to the Resto
for breakfast. The choice was rice, noodles, omelette, tempeh and coffee. We do
have to get use to this style of breakfast, and despite feeling quite foreign
to us, I think we actually do ok on it.
The ride was quite uneventful today, we had a little
climbing to do around a big coal burning power station early on, but after that
it was quite flat. Regular villages, with lots of rice and vegetable fields in
between. The rural scenes were nice, especially when we got glimpses of the
mountains in the hinterland.
We had the usual interaction with the locals as we rode,
including two security guards from the power station, who chased after us in
their car to get photos. Pretty funny.
As we came into Probolingo, we realised that this was a much
bigger city than we had thought. We are noticing that the old main streets in
these larger towns are very green, with lots of overhanging trees, which really
improves them. I wonder if this is a legacy from Dutch colonialism?
We started to look for a café, so that we could sit down and
have some lunch with wifi, so that we could check out the accommodation
options. We ended up at a café called DC19 that was very friendly. They had the
music pumping, a cool fat bike parking attendant, and very enthusiastic staff
to help us out with the wifi, food and coffee choices. You know, prior to our
trip, several people have tried to give us a bad impression of Java, especially
the people. But we have had nothing but the most friendly, helpful and
genuinely happy people interact with us. I think it’s all about what we bring
as visitors to other countries, a smile, a willingness to try and take the time
to communicate, and being prepared to laugh when it goes wrong. We love Java.
We found a couple of homestays for around 150000, $15aud, that
had availability, but one reviewer mentioned that there were several close
hotels that offered better value for just a few dollars more. So we headed off
for the last few kilometres to check out the options. When nearing our homestay
location we noticed a quite flash hotel and thought, what the hell, let’s find
out the price. So we went in and asked, we could get their budget room for $25,
this included breakfast, but cold shower. It looked nice though, so I went back
out to ask Mary what she thought and we decided that we would go with this one.
When we walked back in, the nice guy said that he could do
us a special price of $15. We hadn’t tried to negotiate, but we readily agreed.
This rate still included brekky. So he took us off to our room, we passed all
the nice rooms, into a dark passageway and to a tiny little room. Don’t get me
wrong, this was probably still better than the homestay, perhaps, but it was
cheap. We only found out how cheap later on when Mary used the hand basin, only
to find her feet getting wet. Haahaa, the plumbing wasn’t exactly connected
underneath. We need to remember to ask to see the room before we say yes.
29-01-17
We knew we had a massive day ahead. It didn’t help that we
slept terribly. Probably had something to do with going to bed too early, but
once 3am call to prayer woke us up, that was it, no more sleep.
The day ahead was not a problem for distance, we had about
thirty eight k’s to do. The problem was the climb. Our hotel was only a smidge
above sea level, eighteen metres according to the garmin. Tonight’s stay was
above two thousand two hundred metres. We had heard of people who had made it
up by bike, but not many. Most touring cyclists, and there are not many of
them, just rent a jeep and get them to take them up. We weren’t prepared to
admit defeat from the bottom however, so we resolved to see how far we could get,
we knew that bail out options were available.
We went to breakfast early. The normal fare, but I was
starting to worry as Mary wasn’t able to tolerate the offerings this morning,
she did eat, but certainly didn’t enjoy it. Even worse, the coffee was terrible.
Luckily, we had some nice fruit that we had bought the day before, see how we
go.
We got a few k’s up the road, and ran into the Sunday
morning market. It was wall to wall, Motorbikes, Bicycles, Becak’s, Goats,
Chickens, you name it. This was a road two minutes earlier. It was a lot of fun
though. We eventually made it through, and made good time for a while, the road
was going up but only about one to two percent. The grade slowly started to
change, we were getting kickers at about fifteen percent, but then we would get
a rest at five percent. We could do this climb, if it continued like this. We
got another five k’s done, but now the road was going up continuously at
fifteen percent, with occasional breaks around ten. We just couldn’t keep
going, despite a few rests and a couple of “hike a bikes”. Seriously, we have
never, ever, sweated like this in our lives. We spotted a guy with an empty
light truck, and he knew. He knew, he had spotted us. 200,000 rupiah later,
Larry and Priscilla, were in the back of the truck, Mary and Dave in the front,
and off we all went. It was only after a little while, that Mary looked through
the back window to make sure that the bikes were ok, that we realised that the
truck driver’s three kids had also jumped in the back. Why not have a free trip
up to Bromo, while the crazy fat bikers are paying. Cool by us, and they were
really nice kids too.
If anything, the road got steeper, we looked at each other
and knew that we had made the right decision. We felt bad about it, but we had
to get over it.
The views on the way up were great, not of the crater rim so
much, that was shrouded in cloud and mist, but the homes, the rice terraces,
the cabbage plots on the side of mountains. It is seriously beautiful and
dramatic.
By the time we got to the top, we were shivering in our
sweat soaked clothes. It was genuinely cold at the top. We found a warung and
got a nice hot coffee while we worked out where we would stay. A funny old guy
came in and just started giving me a shoulder massage, 10000 ok? Oh why not. He
was really good though, sorted out a few knobbly bits and then started on Mary,
20000 now, ok? It was pretty funny. But the best massage I’ve ever had for $1.
By the time we organised our accommodation, the rain had
started. Our room was really nice, and we had a hot shower, sort of.
We were not going to get a good view this afternoon, it was
bucketing down, so we headed to the hotel restaurant and had some hot chips and
a cold beer for me (finally) and Mary a coffee. We made the mistake of sitting
by the window. This guy outside was trying to sell us beanies, because it was
cold. He would hide behind a column and the beanie turned into a puppet and popped
out from behind the column with a voice saying “Brrrrrrr, Beanie sir?” It went
on and on and on. It felt like I was in a Doctor Who episode, where if I closed
my eyes, this guy was going to appear alongside me and say “Brrrrrr, Beanie
Sir?” before turning me to stone.
The rain didn’t stop for the rest of the afternoon, so we
just stayed put in the restaurant until dinner time, had an early meal and then
off to bed. An exciting day of riding is planned for tomorrow.
30-01-17
We woke slowly to the continuing sound of light rain on the
roof. We weren’t sure if it would clear, but decided to get up, have breakfast and see what it looked like by then. We really wanted clear conditions for the crossing of the Tengger Crater, not for our comfort, but for the views. Breakfast was really good, we actually had toast available, so a mad dash back to our room was required, to get our one tube of vegemite. So Good.
As breakfast went on, the rain stopped. The cloud was still
really low, well, we were at 2200metres, so that happens. We decided to go for
it. We got our bikes loaded and headed for the National Park boomgate. Well, it
turns out that the entrance ticket we bought on the way up yesterday doesn’t
actually get us into the Park, just the village lookout, that we never went to
because it was bucketing down. They wanted 220,000 rupiah each for us to enter.
This was a lot, especially as we weren’t expecting it. We felt like we were
being ripped off, so I went back and discussed it with the owner of the hotel
we stayed at last night. She said that the amount was correct, but a lot of
visitors have been complaining about it, since the government put the price up
recently. Locals only had to pay 7500 rupiah. I was a bit annoyed about it, as
there had been no mention of it before we got there. We had researched quite a
lot, including the official website. We were stuck. The alternative was to go
back down the mountain to Probolingo, and around to Malang, but that would add
about 100ks on. Also, we had no intention of climbing Bromo, one, we didn’t
have time and, two, we suspected it was enshrouded in cloud.
Our normal attitude is that we don’t want to be the sort of
traveller who haggles the price for everything. We either pay a fair asking
price, or walk away. But in this instance we had to negotiate a better outcome,
all we wanted to do was ride across the park and out the other side. I went to
chat with the guy, finally with much discussion with the ten other attendants
that do nothing but advise the ticket guy, we agreed that if we bought one
ticket and just rode across without climbing Bromo, that would be fine. Phew,
still expensive, but it was much better than twice that. Imagine if in
Australia, we charged twenty times the normal price for a foreigner to enter
our National Parks, imagine the outrage.
Rant for the day, over.
The boom gate lifted and we went on our way. We got our
first view of the inside of the crater. It was amazing. We couldn’t see the
internal volcanos, as they were covered in cloud down to about two hundred
metres above the crater floor. We descended the access track, a drop of about
200metres, and rolled out onto the “Sand Sea”. The sand, is really volcanic
ash, it was quite compact due to the wet weather. We pedalled across it quite
easily. There were quite a few tour four wheel drives taking people to and from
the base of Mt Bromo. I don’t know if anyone was doing the climb, you wouldn’t
have been able to see anything if you did. But the crater floor, was amazing.
You could see the rim, all the way around, but not the top of it. The scale is
massive, on reaching the other side we measured it as ten kilometres from rim
to rim, not in a straight line, but the path we had travelled. We had to ride
for a few minutes through the sulphur smoke from the Bromo crater, it wasn’t as
strong as when we were at Ijen, but it turned the whole landscape quite
surreal. There were several water courses to negotiate and towards the far
side, quite a lot of mud that had been stirred up by the four wheelers.
We stopped for lots of photos, and some video, hopefully we
captured it.
The way out over the crater rim was much higher on the way
out than in. A very narrow, but newly sealed road, negotiated its way up and
over the rim. By the time we got half way up, we were riding/pushing through
thick fog once again. As we crested the rim, we put jackets back on and began
the long descent towards Malang. This was going to be a fun ride too. Luckily the National Parks guys at this end didn’t
ask to see our one ticket, instead, one of them helped Mary push her bike up
the last nasty pinch. They checked that we knew where we were going and sent us
on our way with smiles and waves.
The way down was steep, we had heard that the road surface
was really bad, but at this stage it had been newly sealed. The ridge we were
descending on was a knife’s edge, it was lucky we were in thick fog, or it
might’ve been really scary. We just got hints of the massive drops on both
sides of us. The brakes were copping a really hard time. At one stage about
five k’s down, I noticed Mary’s rear brake totally smoking. I got her to stop
and we both let the brakes cool for a while. The scenery, though still foggy in
places, was magnificent. A small village nestled on a razor back ridge with
vegetable gardens that you could almost call vertical. Once again, the people
were very friendly and genuinely pleased to see us passing through. About ten k’s
down we found a cool little warung, clinging to the side of the ridge and
decide to stop and have a coffee. It was warmer here now, and we could get rid
of some layers.
From here on the road surface degraded to the previously
rumoured cobble stones. The slope however, didn’t let up. This was going to get tough. Our hands were
struggling from the constant brake pressure, and the bumps were getting even
bigger. We had to negotiate around a lot of bike swallowing pot holes, but
because we had to slow the pace down a lot, the brakes were staying cooler. I
thought that the opposite would happen. Eventually the grade lessened, the road
surface improved, and we were free wheeling on towards Malang. Naturally, the
traffic volumes picked up.
We stopped at a nice looking Warung for lunch. They were
really nice, but had no vegetarian options. We were about to leave, when a nice
young guy who could speak English introduced himself and suggested that he
could have a fruit salad made if we liked, we readily agreed. The salad came
out, but it was topped with mayonnaise and grated cheese. WTF. But,
surprisingly it was really nice.
We twisted and turned through the streets of Malang, our
homestay was near the city centre (Kota Malang). What a beautiful and well kept
city this is. We loved it, it had a real cosmopolitan feel to it. Lots of nice
coffee shops, bakeries, etc, so we just had to stop and try one. It was really
good, the first cake we have had on the trip.
A little further on, and down a back lane, Google maps was
convinced that we had arrived at our homestay. Not according to this old lady
who came out and told us that we had to go down another lane, turn right, turn
left, go down, turn left again, and that’s the place. I was sceptical, how did
this lady know where we were staying, we were in the middle of a city of five
million people. I showed her the name of the place on my phone. Yep, that’s
where to go, all in Bahasa of course. So, off we went, and then a kid came past
on a motorbike and she told him to take us there. OK, seriously, the young kid
took us straight to the front gate, but it was over a kilometre further on, how
did she know? I still don’t get it. Strange forces at work.
The homestay, hosted by a lovely lady by the name of Yhosie,
is awesome. A traditional home, with our own room out the back and very
welcoming. Yhosie’s Dad was very interested in us, and explained that one of
his passions is antique bikes. He rides a 1945 Japanese military bike, left
behind by them after the war, which then became an Indonesian Police bike,
before he acquired it. I asked him if I could take some photos in the morning,
I can’t wait.
It’s pouring rain again now, it looks like we might go
hungry if it doesn’t let up soon, Goodnight.
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