Up before dawn
To no one’s surprise, I didn’t get any sleep at all. Our guide came to pick us up at midnight and whisked us away before we’d had half a minute to open our eyes. They did provide us with breakfast though, a durian flavoured cake log. That’s as nutritious as it gets! It took around an hour to drive from the town up to the Ijen Crater, and it was fairly nippy. I wasn’t best prepared for the cold weather at the car park, but there was a fire to stay somewhat warm. The temperature didn’t concern me, I knew as soon as I got climbing, I’d be too hot for warm clothes anyway.
For general information on the Ijen Crater, check this out.
At half 1 we began our hike to the Ijen Crater, and had a pretty good chat with our guide, Denis. It was pitch black, but fortunately we had flashlights provided for us, we definitely needed them. The sky was beautifully clear, full of stars wherever you looked, true darkness up in the hills. In the distance there was some ominous lightning filling the sky, hopefully not heading towards us! There weren’t many people yet, it doesn’t surprise me at this time to be honest. The only people we saw were the miners coming downhill with their barrows of yellow sulphur, it smells of farts. We also saw the occasional lazy sod who paid the miners to barrow them all the way up to the top. I couldn’t believe some people, young and healthy, would lie in a wheel barrow and go up.
Up hill and down crater
We had a short rest half way, the path was pretty steep but definitely not as bad as I thought it would be. Due to the darkness, there wasn’t much to see, only when dawn broke could you begin to appreciate some of the landscape. After walking for a couple of hours, we reached the top of the crater. Now it was time do go into the Ijen Crater, and we had to don our gas mouth masks due to the sulphur fumes. It was still dark in the crater, so the descent was a bit sketchy. God knows how the miners do this with 10s of kilograms of sulphur on their backs.
Check out our first mountain adventure in Asia!
Right near the bottom of the Ijen Crater, the sulphur fumes were strong and stung our eyes. There were a few groups down here, and we managed to see the blue flames. The flames weren’t as big or magnificent as I’d expected to be honest, but still cool nonetheless. I guess the journey is usually better than the destination. Once we’d had our fill of the flames, we made our way back up. About half way up, we stopped for an hour to see the Sun rise and light the Ijen Crater up, pretty darn cool. There was a huge lake of acidic water, not a wise choice for a quick dip I might note.
We'll be coming down the mountain
We took plenty of photos as we ascended the Ijen Crater, the view of the crater and lake being better than the flames to be honest. Before descending, we took a few more rounds of photos, pretty great sights of the surrounding area too. I enjoyed the walk back down the mountain, the landscape was in full view, and the other mountains and hills cast their great shadows. This was probably my favourite part of the day to be honest. It took us a couple of hours to get down, and we saw plenty of people now, both arriving and leaving.
The tour also took us to a coffee plantation as well as a rubber tree plantation. I’ve seen a few coffee plantations in my time, but it was a first for the rubber trees, kind of interesting to be honest. You can see the rubber residue seeping out, similar to sap, and collecting in buckets tied to the trees. Our final call of the day was a quite and quaint waterfall, no one else around. I’ll be honest, I tried to appreciate it, but I hadn’t slept properly in over 24 hours and I just couldn’t care at this point. My concentration was minimal at this point.
We got back to the hostel late in the morning, I went for a shower and collapsed for a 6-hour nap. Well deserved and needed I thought! In the evening, we only visited a shopping centre, had some food, and walked back to the hostel. That was us done for the night, and sleep took hold soon afterwards.
