Where Did You Go On Your First Weekend Out of the City?

To Bromo!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Bromo

Bromo is a four hour drive (because of the crazy roads and traffic) out of Surabaya. My roommate (Ashleigh) met a girl at the health club in January. This girl works in a nearby town teaching English at an English Language Centre. Anyways, this girl has a roommate who has been working in Indonesia for 2 years and 3 months. So this guys is pretty versed in the ins and outs of Indonesian culture in this area of the country. Anyways, so this guy was renting a van to go to Bromo this weekend and needed to fill some spaces. So we filled them.....

On Saturday we took a cab to the next town over where these people live. After a confusing directions and a phone call between our cabbie and the driver who was going to drive us to the volcano we made it to meet up with the girl (Olga).

After waiting around for everyone to get their shit together, which wasn't together when we arrived all bright eyed and bushy tailed, I knew it was going to be one of those trips. The strange kind that you go on with the people in your University's outdoor club. Anyways, about an hour and a half after we arrived at the house and some issues surrounding the actual number of seats in the rental we were on our way.

The drive was pretty interesting. Got to see a lot of people and little towns along the way. We arrived at Bromo around 6pm in the evening (four hours in the car). The road up to Bromo from the "main road" was unbelieveable. I have never seen any road like it. It was nuts, a lot of it was steeper than that little section on Oxford st. that is really steep just before the graveyard. And it was windy and not that well maintained, as the ash that falls from the sky was all over it. But the driver took it slow and we were safe.

We had dinner at the Lava Lodge restaurant after checking in and I finally got to try some satay! Sadly to say, I make satay better. Dissapointing, not that it was bad, just that I can do it better than the people at the Lava Lodge. Anyways, then we hung out and drank some Bintang (Indonesia's beer... its okay, nothing special) in the little cabin/suite that was assigned to the five of us. Went to bed around 12.30 or so and had to get up at 4am! Good sleep though.

We got up at 4am because we were going to see the sun rise over the volcanoes. We hired a Landrover to drive us to the beginning of the trail to the look out point. I was a bit disapointed because I would have just as happily walked from the lodge to the lookout point, and would certainly have done this if I had been accompanied by a certain Scottish boyfriend. Anyways, the altitude was about 2550 m so I was feeling it on the steep hike from the truck to the lookout point.




At the bottom of the lookout point you could "buy a horse", but they were more like Ponies and I would have felt bad for the pony that had to carry my large white person up that hill. And plus I have two legs....




So the sunrise was neat. I haven't seen any sunrises here yet largely because the sunrises about an hour before I like to. So at 5.15 the sun was coming up and I was standing on the edge of a crater watching ash spew from the active volcano, Bromo. It was awesome. Totally forgot all of my stress and worries for at least the hour we were standing up there admiring the view. It was great!


Then it was time to head back. We had a nap at Lava Lodge before our 8am breakfast and watched the volcano from the lookout at the lodge which was pretty impressive! And then we had the long car ride back and the taxi back to our house!

Video of volcano erupting!


View of the volcano from out lodge after the mist lifted. The crater is huge and flat and full of ash. We were being pelted with ash as we stood there taking pictures of the volcano. The little white specks are trucks and the far building in the distance is a temple.