We decided to take the touristy Mt. Bromo Sunrise Tour for ~$15. We booked our “package” with the folks who brought us from Jogja to Cemoro Lawang (where Bromo is). Their office was rather shady and they were kind of pushy for getting us on the trip, but thankfully the price was fair so we didn’t think too much of it.

Sunrise

We departed at 3.30am towards Mt. Penanjakan. Mt. Penanjakan is basically one of the nearby mountains/volcanoes which overlooks Mt. Bromo. It’s a great spot for viewing the sunrise as it breaks upon the mountain region. Truly a sight to behold! We took a jeep up the mountain along with some other tourist (the jeep was big, like the army kind that could seat 6 people including the driver). Thankfully the jeep wasn’t open top, because the weather was crazy cold in the morning since we were so high up.

Upon reaching top of the mountain, we had to take a short trek up towards the viewing point, due to the sheer number of jeeps parked alongside the road, blocking the route to drive up top. There were shops along the way selling simple food (pop mie, bread, etc.) and instant drinks, as well as some gear to protect you from the cold (gloves, beanies, scarves). Being the gluttonous individuals that we were, we stopped on our short trek for a pop mie + hot drink break. The pop mie was great, the drink was way too sweet for some reason, but still pretty good. heh

Upon reaching the top (the viewing point), to our dismay we realised our pop mie break had left us delayed quite some bit in getting a good viewing spot for the sunrise. There was a ton of other tourists who had already gathered towards the edge (closest to the sun) to get a good viewing spot for the sunrise. We had to be content with a spot further back. In hindsight it was a pretty good stroke of luck, because the sunrise was super meh, and after the sun rose we could get towards the other edge (about a right turn away) for a great view of Bromo! Also something to note, there were some locals renting out mats to sit on while taking in the sunrise. Wouldn’t recommend renting the mats, since EVERYONE was extremely kiasu and standing up during the sunrise, which meant the ones who rented mats left them completely unused.

As it was at our hostel, the viewing point was equally freezing; and as the sun rose it became windier and made our hands super cold and weak while we waited for the sun to rise.

Mt. Bromo Summit

So after the sunrise (at about 6am) and once we finished taking about 300-400 photos, we went back down to our jeep to proceed to our next stop – the summit. Everyone was in better spirits now (def much less groggy), and we had a nice little chit-chat with our jeep buddies along the way. Upon reaching the top of Mt. Bromo, we had to cross this gigantic plateau (known as the Sea of Sand) to get to the top of the volcano. Ordinary (per what we read online in other people’s blogs) this place would be exceedingly windy, and the sand would get everywhere, making it an uncomfortable trek to the top. Thankfully the weather was kind to us, and we experienced nothing of the sort.

There were many horses around the Sea of Sand, brought along by locals to serve as a novelty taxi ride to the top. We didn’t take the horses though as we prefered to walk up and take pictures along the way. Due to this fact (of many horses) there was a shit ton of horse shit strewn everywhere on the Sea of Sand. They could rename it the Sea of Sandy Horseshit because that’s pretty much what it was. The horses just let the poo out so casually it was baffling. The biggest challenge conquering the sea of sand that day was in mainly avoiding the horse poo mines that were all around us.

Once we crossed the Sea of Sand the land started to get rockier and cliff-ier in a mountain-ey sort of way. It started to get tiring to climb up and we had to take short breaks along the way to catch our breath (damn weak srsly). There were some more shops here selling Pop Mie and Drinks so you could stop for refreshments again. We didn’t. Oh, also for some weird reason (probably geographical), the whole summit part of Bromo was a desert, so despite being high up like the rest of the mountain it was not cold at all, and felt hot like the rest of the country. Cool.

Finally after crossing the cliffy rocks we reached the start of the volcano opening 🌋. There was a nicely constructed flight of stairs (and altar thing) leading up to the volcano hole. The flight of stairs was about 3-4 storeys high and it was by that point super tiring to climb up (even more so for Dom who was carrying a bunch of unnecessary camera stuff, trying to act photographer..🙄😂).

It was an arduous climb up, and after much feet dragging and ledge grabbing we finally reached the top. There were, of course, a ton of people up there, and the volcano mouth was pretty narrow, so people were squeezing around trying to get good viewing points of the active volcano. The volcano (being active) was constantly rumbling, which was pretty cool, but we couldn’t see any lava (like in the emoji), which probably was a good thing. There was a small fence protecting people from falling over into the volcano (tbh it felt like it was quite easy to fall in) but it looked really flimsy, and did not inspire a lot of confidence. There was a bunch of people flying drones into the crater, they probably got good pictures of more smoke in there. Up top we took a bunch of pictures, sat around to admire the smoking hole for a bit and then made our way down. It was the first time Dom had climbed a volcano, and he was thus appropriately excited for the occasion.

We climbed back down the nice stairs, walked through the cliffy rocks and then past the Sea of Sandy Horseshit towards our Jeep, making sure to take a whole lot of photos along the way as well. We decided to get some photos in front of the jeep for memories, however our jeep was ugly, so we chose another jeep to take photos in front of that was cooler looking.

We were then driven down and back to the hostel, where we rushed to pack up and get on to our next destination (Kawah Ijen). We had breakfast at the hostel, which consisted of pretty simple food (fried noodles, bread, some shrimp floss and weak coffee) before stocking up on some snacks at the nearby chapalang shop.

On to Ijen

We paid for a ride to our next hotel (5 hours away at Banyuwangi) for ~$20. The route was as such:

Cemoro Lawang » Probolinggo (1.5hours) » Bangyuwangi (5hours)

We got (slightly) scammed by the bus company, since the transport we paid for did not stop us at our hotel, but rather at the nearby ferry terminal. The driver (of course) feigned ignorance as and we had to take a minibus from a tout at the terminal to the hotel. It was $10 for a 10 minute drive (we didn’t know far it was when we paid), so we were understandably unimpressed by this cheat.

We reached our accomodation (Ketapang Indah Hotel) at 7pm, and ate a very hearty dinner at the hotel’s restaurant as we didn’t have a proper lunch. Basically ordered a ton of food and gorged down everything! Thankfully the food was reasonably priced.

After stuffing our faces we went back to our room and crashed, as we had to be up at 1am the following day for the Ijen trek.