Baffled Abroad: The Journey to Ijen, chapter 2

12:30 AM: I'm sitting on the edge of my bed, listening to insects outside in the dark. I'd only gone to bed about 5 hours before and hadn't slept great, but I feel fine. Already dressed for the climb. It is supposed to be a bit cold and quite windy at the top, so I was glad to have my rain-jacket to stop the wind.

As for shoes, no boots, just my old beat up sneakers. No flashlight. No warm clothes. Christian is even less prepared, withno long sleeves or long pants, electing to simply layer a few t-shirts and shorts, one being the asian syle half-pants he bought in Ubud.

Outside, we meet up with the girls, Alex and Jemma, who are both considerably more prepared (thanks to their considerably larger luggage) with warm clothes. Alex brings a bag of photography gear.

Our guide and driver introduce themselves at the parking lot and we climb into the jeep. We're told we might meet Sam finally up on the mountain. This is beginning to feel like Heart of Darkness, with mentions of the mythical Sam haunting us all along our trek. We hear his name come up now and then between indonesians, such as our guide and his aquaintances, but as we can't speak indonesian, the mystery only intensifies.

The road up is well paved, but there is little to no traffic as we ride. We wind around jungle roads for about half an hour. As we reach the "base camp" parking lot, we see numerous cars and bikes. Here we pay the 150,000 rupiah entrance fee, and see that there are quite a few people going up the trail. Most are locals.

Also, there is a bathroom there...I didn't need to use it...but as it was described to me, it consisted of a empty room with a very small hole in the ground with a sort of "dump-bucket" type water spout which floods the floor as a means of flushing.

Hike

Anyway, as exciting as toilets are, there was a volcano somewhere that needed climbing. It was no easy climb. The peak we came to was about 2.6 km altitude I think (I don't know what we started at). Suffice it to say, it was hard. Our guide was a champ though, even taking Alex's heavy camera bag in addition to the bag he already had. We were marching alongside and past numerous other people and groups. The guide said probably 100+ were climbing every day, and far more in peak season (not sure when that is).

The other walkers often has lights and headlamps, which were terrible and constantly ruined our night vision, but the moon was bright, the sky was largely free of clouds, and the path was in good condition. It is well-traveled. Ijen crater is used for sulfur mining, all dug out and carried up and down the mountain by hand,essentially. They had baskets connected with a strut of bamboo, together they could carry 60-70 kg (that's nearly 150 lbs), and hike it something like 2 km down the mountain for which they'd get paid pennies. Nuts.

Once we were up high, the wind was indeed strong, and I gave my windbreaker to Christian, as my single long sleeved shirt was doing ok for me.

Anyway. the first leg of the hike is by far the hardest, very steep. After that it flattens and climbs slower, then moves along a ridge to the edge of the crater. Behind us, though we couldn't see it clearly, was another peak, I think it was

Speaking of sulfur, there was a vaguely sulfuric smell but nothing awful. Inside the pack our guide carried gasmasks for each of us, because the sulfur was about to get a whole lot worse.

The Crater

Ijen crater is home to the famous "Blue Fire" which is flaming hot sulfur gas pouring out of the ground beside a huge acidic crater lake. At the edge of the crater we could see down, 200 meters to the bottom; a winding "path" with little dots of light here and there where travelers slowly picked their way down the rocks. Indeed, the path down was little more than a reasonably traversable route through the fields of volcanic rocks.

At the bottom we could see the presence of the lake, and more importantly the billowing clouds of sulfur gas that awaited us. Here we got out the gas masks, but wouldn't need them until much deeper, and we started to descend.

In the dark, the rocks were a challenge to navigate. Being careful not to step in loose gravel and lose our footing, and with only a couple of lights between the 5 of us. But we made it,slowly and surely, until we stopped, and I finally looked up and saw blue fire. Little spots of it up and down the side of the hill, peeking out of clouds of smoke...or sulphur gas I guess.

It's almost impossible to get a good photo of the fire. In the dark, it requires quite a long exposure to photograph, I guess, and the billows of smoke make that come out somewhat blurry. The only one among us with a decent camera and tripod was Alex, so I can't show you the best pics (she said she'd email them to me someday...when she is back home with a computer and whatnot). Instead I can show you some crappy pic from the gopro. Christian had some on his iPhone you can see on his instagram page as well.

The wind blew away from us, so we didn't have to climb around to the other side, but we did climb closer, which brought us occasionally into billows of hot sufur gas, which was fun. Kinda warm, which was pleasant, but choking and toxic which was not so pleasant. Gas masks finally came in handy.

Sunrise

But as beautiful and memorizing as the fire was, we were on a schedule. The sun was rising, and we needed to climb further, around the rim of the crater so that we could see the sunrise. I suppose I'll let pictures speak for themselves. I can't get to Christian's iPhone shots, and I didn't bring my phone, so right now all I have is GoPro, but here's what I've got:

That's Jemma btw

From here, you can see miles and miles down to the coast (I think it is about 20 miles) of east Java, and a bit wrapping around north as well, though you can't see it clearly there on the left side of the pic.