Mount Bromo

I think everyone knows that I’ve kind of been dodging natural disasters along my trip – flooding and cyclones in Australia, earthquake in New Zealand.  And I’m quite glad that I decided to go to Indonesia instead of Japan (that’ll be on a different trip).  Anyway, just before the Mount Bromo leg of my trip, I got an message from Sarah advising that all I really had left to dodge was hurricanes and volcanos.  Well, Mount Bromo is an active volcano.  And it was such an experience to go!

We drove up a long and winding mountain road – looking out the windows at the ash path that has blanketed the valleys around Mount Bromo.  It was misty, and smoky, and incredibly eerie.

We stayed at a cute little inn on the edge of the major crater with amazing views of the volcano itself.  The smoke plumes were amazing.  And when we were in our rooms, the windows and doors rattled with the seismic activity – that continued all nights.

The next morning we were all up at 3:00am for our hike up the mountain to watch the sun

Seismic Activity

Mount Bromo at Sunset

rise over the volcano.  I had no torch, and the hike was challenging, made even more so by my clumsiness 2 days before when I’d slipped on some mud at one of the temples and strained my knee (to the point that it swelled up to the size of a grapefruit.  After some slips and trips up the mountain, I made the decision to stay at the first point to watch the sunrise, rather than attempting the climb up the rest of the mountain.  It was amazing to watch the sun break over the volcano and accentuate the massive smoke plumes that rose into the air.  Over and over the volcano belched out ash and smoke – no lava as the lava bed is actually 350m to the west of the mountain, under a mile or two of rock.  But it was stunning none the less.

If you look at the base of the volcano - that's a Hindu temple to the element of Fire.