The plan was that a day bus ride would bring us to our overnight stop outside of Probolingo where we would spend the night in order to do a pre-dawn climb to the peak of Mt. Bromo, a slightly-active volcano set, along with two other peaks, in the middle of a crater which is sunk in the middle of a high plateau. Dramatic, no?
After our hike and breakfast, we'd put in another day of bus-time, take the ferry to Bali, and get on one more bus for transfer to Lovina, on the Northern coast of the island. All the logistics were supposedly taken care of so it was to be an easy plan, if hard on the ass.Bromo was absolutely amazing. The rest of the trip, less so.
Day one involved 10 hours in a mini-van, but we had some room to stretch out a bit, and the day passed surprisingly quickly. We arrived late at our hostel where we grabbed a bite to eat before crashing in preparation for our 4am wake up. The next day we met up with 3 Dutch companions and set out at 4:30 am in the freezing dark. Ben and I had strong flashlights with us (thanks Mr. Blair!), but that was it, and there were no other lights as we headed down into the crater. That was the easy part though, because we could follow the road down. Once we got to the crater, we were told that there were some white stones which we could follow for an easy 20 minute stroll to the base of Bromo where we would find a staircase leading us to the rim of the volcano. Well, let's just say that we never found those white stones, but we did end up on a fantastic hike winding through an ancient lava field and straight up to the highest part of Bromo's rim, racing the sunrise the whole time. Check it out:
After a shower and breakfast, we got back on the bus which took us from the heights of the plateau back down to Probolingo where we sat around for awhile before another van, much more crowded this time, picked us up around 11. Less than an hour in, a young Dutch guy and a young Indonesian guy who worked for the tour company almost came to blows because the Dutch guy didn't think he should have to share his seat; this was his first trip in Asia.We had a very tense 10 minutes which included a small civil-war between the 6 Dutch in the car who disagreed on who was at fault, and a very worried driver finally getting the Indonesian kid to take off before things got worse. Ben and I just tried to keep our heads down. Eventually we took off again, but had to take detours because of political rallies filling some of the towns on the way to the coast. FINALLY we made it around 7, only to find out that in fact it was "too late" and our bus on the otherside of the ferry, in Bali, was no longer available to us. The tour company eventually bought us each a ferry ticket, and wished us good luck.On arrival in Bali, we searched for a bus to Lovina but the public buses had stopped running. Conveniently, a private van was waiting where the public buses *should* be for any travellers stragling in late... Luckily there were 7 of us to negotiate a somewhat decent price to charter the van, and we set off for a final 2 hour ride which would finally bring us to Lovina. The van dropped us off here:
Our first horrified response was that we couldn't afford the place, but the owner found us some decent $8 rooms around the back and we settled in for a few days of luxury.
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