I can assure you 3:30 in the morning feels like a ridiculous time to get out of bed to start your day. It didn’t seem that bad when I went to bed. The early rise was necessary to get on our way to see the sunrise over Mt Bromo. Many of the other tourists going to see the same sunrise got up even earlier than this, despite the fact that the sun won’t be rising until 6 am.
We already figured out what to wear the night before. I decided to ask the front desk for a warm coat. I know they have a few for travellers (like me) who didn’t pack something warm enough. It turns out they only have one size. It was so large, I couldn’t reach the bottom of the side pockets. I had to roll up the sleeves and bend over to reach the bottom of the zipper to do up the coat. Despite the amusement I caused for Judith, I was happy that morning to have the coat on. It was 9 degrees when we started off.
The driver and Justine were already waiting for us when we walked out the door. The 4x4 was an older Jeep model and the driver, whose name now escapes me 3 days later, was only 19 years old. We loaded into the Jeep with Justine and the driver in front and Judith and I sitting in the back facing each other on bench seats over the rear wheels. We set off for the adventure.
We quickly join a line of other 4x4s heading for the sunrise spot. We first navigate through the narrow, dark streets of the city. I can’t imagine anyone sleeping through this roar outside their residences which must go on for a couple of hours every day around 3am.
We leave the outskirts of the community and come to a fork in the road. There are two Jeeps parked in the right fork and they’re blocked by a gate. I presume that these jeeps are waiting for the gate to be put up. Who knows when that will be. We end up going on the left fork. We hadn’t gone very far when our driver decides to turn around on this narrow mountain road. It’s pitch black. He manages to do a three point turn; by this time there are other 4x4s coming down the narrow road and we have to slip by them before we get back to the fork. The fork is so close to the road we’re on that he can’t make the turn in one try. He has to backup and run at it again from a better angle to make this turn. By this time the two jeeps have cleared the fork because the gate is up. The driver drives under the open gate, stops the car, gets out and runs back to help the other driver put the gate back down. Both run back to their respective 4x4s and take off. At this point I’m waiting for the Indonesian police to arrest us all.
The “road” we’re on will be going down unto the massive caldera of Mt Tengger, then across the large sea of sand on the bottom of the crater and then back up another section of the caldera wall to a viewing spot on Mt Pananjakan that faces east over Mt. Bromo.
Shortly after going through the gate, our diver manually sets the vehicle into 4 wheel drive via the lever on the floor near the manual stick shift.
Everyone in the Jeep is being bounced around. The steep walls of the Tengger caldera ranges in height anywhere from 200 to 600 meters. The steep narrow road down to the caldera floor hugs the side of the caldera wall dropping in elevation in a big hurry. In the dark it’s hard to tell how quickly but the numerous hairpin turns and the fact that I have to brace myself from falling into the back of the driver’s seat confirms it is a quick drop. Somewhere before we finish coming onto the sand sea, there is another line of 4x4s joining into our road. It must be from the fork we abandoned and I can only think our driver changed paths because the right fork road was faster. I can see a long line of headlights snaking their way down the slope. I don’t know how many 4x4s are making the trek today, but It must be hundreds. I ask Justine to ask the driver if he knows the number. The answer is an astounding “about 1,000”. In any event, I think I’m clear of Indonesian jails this time.
We come to the sand sea of the Tengger caldera. The sea measures almost 10 Kms from one side of the caldera wall to the other. I’m not sure how long this section of road is, but I think it basically cuts a “corner” of the caldera floor. As a guess, I’d say it was at least 4 km. Once on the crater floor, the “road” widens. The sand is far from smooth; there are deep potholes, dunes and other uneven routes to avoid. It’s a different rough road than the road down the caldera wall. The 4x4s are now free to spread out and race across the sand sea. The sea is full of volcanic ash from many eruptions including a recent one in 2004 when a couple of tourists died during a surprise eruption of Mt Bromo. The vehicles kick up an amazing amount of dust and following too close behind another 4x4 is like driving in a dense fog. Since it’s still dark, you can see the amount of dust by looking at the glare of headlights from vehicles around you. The free-for-all along this road corridor and the driving on the sand makes me feel as if I’m in the middle of a Max Max movie.
Once we reach the side of the caldera, we start the drive up the steep wall towards Mt. Pananjakan. We are a long snake of 4x4s ranging in vehicles as small as Suzuki’s to Jeeps to Land Cruisers. Slower vehicles are passed. We climb up the side for about 15 minutes and come to a section where cars begin parking on the side of the road. As we creep along, they begin parking on both sides and then they are parked in front of us. It’s a problem because we’re no where close to the lookout where we need to be. Someone has jammed the route and our driver cannot take us up the mountain. So we all get out and begin to walk.
Mt. Pananjakan is close to 2800 meters. I’m not sure how far we are but as I walk I know the air is much thinner than at sea level. Justine quickly labours in our walk and makes an executive decision to hire one of the many motorcycle carriers to take us up the hill. Sunrise is due soon and her job is to make sure we do not miss out. She’s been great at making sure that we see and do everything on the itinerary. We have been pleased with her efforts and I can say she has always exceeded expectations. The unplanned motorbike ride up the mountain was no exception.
Judith and I hop onto the back of carriers and we start up the mountain. Justine is an experienced rider and she negotiated driving one and not being the passenger. The traffic is jammed when we got on. It’s the same jam that caused us to stop. The bikes weave their way through the stopped 4x4s. The only clearance they need is the width of their handlebars and they’re pretty confident of the spaces they can fit in. I couldn’t believe some of tight spaces they could squeeze through, zig zagging their way between 3 lanes of vehicles and pedestrian traffic.
Eventually, they clear the traffic mess and we have an exhilarating ride, carving up the mountain road. Unfortunately another jam ensued and when the cyclists couldn’t proceed any further we had to dismount and proceed on foot again. Justine tired again and with sunrise approaching, gave Judith and I instructions as to getting on the right path to get to the viewing spot. We would have missed it but we heard Justine yell at us from below to turn. Fortunately we weren’t that far from the path when the motorcyclists became stuck.
We walk the path to the viewing spot and when we arrive, find that it’s crowded. Like shopping in Vancouver Chinatown with your Mother crowded. We find a spot and wait for the sun to come up.
I like early morning and late in the day light. It’s a soft light that takes out the harshness in the objects I see. I was looking forward to capturing this in pictures, but it’s really hard to get any good shots when you’re with thousands of others all looking for a similar shot. So many tourists are posing for their shots. It’s not enough to stand and smile at the camera. Now you need to pretend you’re in some kind of picture shoot to get your look, requiring multiple poses and repeats if you don’t like what you see. It’s an exercise in patience to wait for them to finish their set.
It feels like I took a hundred pictures that morning. There’s lots to like about digital photography, a big memory card and extra batteries.
We finish the sunrise viewing on Mt Pananjakan and find Justine. Fortunately the crowd has thinned out and she’s easy to spot. We make out way to the exit. The road is still a parking mess, exactly how we left it an hour ago. There are a few tourists that have returned to their 4x4s but they’re unable to move. We walk down the hill a bit and find the motorcycles and drivers that took us up the hill. So we hop on again and start making our way down. To my surprise, the jam is crazier than when we left it. We zig and zag between parked 4x4s finding a slow path down the mountain, travelling on the mountain side, in between the parked 4x4s and sometimes on the cliff side. There are many other bikes and pedestrians doing the same thing. The drivers seem to be able to squeeze through the tightest of spaces and skirt past the cliff edges. I am thoroughly impressed. At some point we pop loose from the parking jam and breeze back to the point where we originally got on the bikes.
We walk down a ways until we run into our driver. It seems the jam is breaking up at the point we got stuck so we quickly get in and he begins to turns the Jeep around in what seems like an incredibly narrow point in the road with one of the shoulders being the cliff edge. I’m in the passenger seat while Judith and Justine are in the back. Suddenly Justine says that a motorcycle just went over the cliff edge less than 50 feet back up the hill from us. I look back and there are a couple of people looking down the cliff side but no one else from the myriad of people there. She can hear the people yelling, not sure if the driver is OK or not, but someone had said that it was unfortunately that such an expensive bike was involved. Justine theorized that the driver was not local. There is a skill necessary for the mountain road and the driver was not sufficiently careful. There doesn’t seem to be much concern as the other drivers appear to just look after their patrons including our driver who finishes his turning around and joins the long line of vehicles snaking back down.
Today it clearly paid not to have been one of the early vehicles. The untangling of stuck 4x4s would have taken a long time to clear up. It would be like opening a one way zipper with the zipper teeth at be beginning of the zipper the first to be closed in and the last to be released.
It’s an interesting adventure partly fuelled by these young adrenaline charged 4x4 drivers who have dressed up their rigs with lots of aftermarket bling and decals. It’s something that many 4x4 drivers seem to like to do and our driver is part of that crowd. They like to drive aggressively and the fact they can make a living driving a 4x4 in a country like Indonesia would be a dream job.
Now that it’s daylight, I have an appreciation on how difficult the terrain is and the skill you need to scream up and down the mountain road. When we get back down to the sandy crater floor again, the 4x4s are doing an excellent job of kicking up the volcanic ash on the sand sea. It’s a a cloudy storm cloud all around us. At this point I think it’s a good idea to take out my scarf I purchased at one of the batik places and use it to breath through. The wind is swirling the kicked up sand and dust and I’m not a big fan of eating or breathing grit.
On the flats, it’s another free-for-all race to get to a spot near the base of Mt Batok. It’s the closest the jeeps are permitted to be to Mt Bromo and there’s already a sea of parked 4x4s. Since the sun is out, it’s already 10 degrees warmer so we leave our big coats in the Jeep. It’s a 20 min walk from this point to the base of Mt Bromo, but the tour includes a ride on horses to the base. They’re ponies, but even so, they’re able to find a larger horse for Judith. She tells me that her handler adjusted the stirrups to be as long as possible but they were still too short.
The handlers walk the horses to the base of Mt Bromo. We then run the gamut of souvenir sellers and start up the 240 stairs to the rim of the crater. It’s slow going because you can only be as fast as the person in front of you. There are little rest stops along the way. Near the top the woman in front of me slows down, so she took up my offer to carry her bag up the rest of the way.
At the rim of Mt Bromo, we find a viewing spot and peer over. It goes down a long way, is very steep and is still active. Steam is rising from the base somewhere down there. It’s an awesome site and makes me appreciate the power of Mother Earth. The rim walk is frighteningly narrow. I am careful manoeuvring around because a misstep would be less than ideal.
We make our way back down the steps and run the gamut of souvenir sellers again. We look for our horse handlers again and they’re nowhere to be seen. We look around a bit more and are close to making alternate arrangements when my horse handler shows up. Saved, although the other riders only asked us for 10,000 rupiah to go back to the Jeep, about a buck CDN.
We get back to the Jeep and start making our way out. We take the photo opportunity at the sign and then make the trek out of the caldera. It’s been an awesome morning and it’s only 9:00. We have breakfast on the outside deck of the restaurant and return to the room to shower off the dust and get our bags ready. We’re on our way to Surabaya today visiting villages and sites along the way.
It’s a long drive into Surabaya, Indonesia’s second largest city, mostly because of the heavy traffic which is clearly insane. We sit for long stretches at intersections so I get to amuse myself by napping (we did get up at 3:30 am) or taking pictures of ridiculously loaded motorcycles.
We manage to navigate through the painfully slow traffic until we reach the Arab Quarter and mosque. We walk through the Pasar Ampel market full of clothing, rugs, food, spices, carpets, toys, jewelry electronics and just about everything else under the sun. The stalls range in size and usually the person managing the storefront is sitting at the front of the store checking out the foot traffic going by. They’re often enticing you to come in to buy.
The Suman Ampel mosque is next to the market (we had to go through the market to get to the mosque entrance). It was founded in the 15th centuries by one of the nine Muslim saints of Java. We went in and were asked to wear a head cover. We toured the mosque but, similar to other stops we’ve toured, Judith’s favourite part was the cat that came to visit.
After the visit to the mosque it was getting dark. We raced over to Chinatown and got a picture of the gates.
We drove over to the Singgasana Hotel where we were staying that night. We had some difficulty finding it. By the we get there it’s after 6:00. It’s also a large hotel with over 200 rooms. We get ourselves settled in for our overnight stay. We decide to have dinner and I order a light meal with vegetables. My dinner arrives and this time I wait a while for Judith’s order to arrive. My dinner starts to get cold, so I start without her. I’m finished before Judith’s meal arrives. We don’t know why this is happening on such a regular basis. I think it must be annoying. Our quick dinner ended up being 90 minutes long.
We’re boarding a flight the next morning for Maumere in Flores island and need to be ready to leave by 5:30. We covered a lot of ground today.
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