We had decided to visit Ijen volcano in East Java, famous for it’s massive sulphuric crater lake, and we had decided to do it the local way. So we drove up from Denpasar to Gilimanut, an approximate 4 hour drive due to the amount of trucks and lorries we had to overtake on the way. In Gilimanut we boarded the public ferry to Ketapang, East Java. Boarding was easy. We got stopped by a policeman who wanted to see our license and we were probably close to having to pay the local bribe that most foreigners on vehicles in Bali are forced to pay- but luckily the queue started moving and we were blocking the entrance so the policeman let us go on our way.
The ferry took around 30 minutes and for me those 30 minutes were spent strategizing over how I would save myself if we had to sink (Indonesia isn’t known for it’s boat safety standards and this ferry wasn’t any exception). For some reason, the ferry spent around another 30 minutes hanging around the harbour before actually entering and letting everyone off. We had booked a room at a Homestay and the guy, Ganda, was nice enough to meet us at the ferry and show us the way to his house which was literally in the middle of a local village. It was a very basic house, with a squat toilet and a very bare kitchen. The bedroom was clean but small and the one thing that bothered me the most was that it had a window to the garage that had no glass and also a door to the attic that didn’t close. My paranoid mind and I immediately thought about all the insects or rodents that can enter our room at night. The fact that, 10 minutes later, I spotted a massive rat walking across the wooden panels in the kitchen towards our bedroom, didn’t help. From that point on, I knew I couldn’t stay in that room, and after a discussion with Marc I guiltily told Ganda about the rat and that I couldn’t sleep at his house. The fact that he was so understanding about it made me feel even more guilty. He even came with us and showed us the way to a nearby hotel.
By the time we arrived at a nearby hotel it was late so we just slept and the following morning we left early to another Homestay near the entrance to the trail up the volcano. We didn’t do much that day and the following day we set off to climb the volcano up to the crater rim at 2,386 metres high. It was a slow and gradual climb. We took almost 2 hours going up, stopping regularly to speak to people, or stopping at the request of locals who want to take a photo with us (as the locals were fascinated with the appearance of Caucaseans) stopping for a coffee and pot noodles at the cafe before the peak, and also chatting away to the many local miners who work arduously on the volcano.
The view at the crater rim looked like a picture from a postcard, it was so amazing. Imagine a 1km wide lake, the water a bright turqoise blue and at the edge the yellow solidified sulphur with the rising sulphuric gases that stank so much. We spent around 2 hours at the top, enjoying the view and taking photos. The most fascinating part of it was watching the miners at work. These men would walk the 3km up to the crater rim, walk down to the lake, collect the sulphur and place it in a basket on their back while inhaling all the harmful fumes, then start their journey back with anything between 70 and 100kg of sulphur on their backs. This meant carefully climbing the steep 800m climb up to the rim and descending 3km back down to the starting point. They do this twice a day, so each miner collects possibly 140 to 200 kg per day. And how much do they earn for their arduous work? A mere 800 rupiah (50c euro) for each kilo. Therefore a lot of these miners barely earn 15 Euro per day. Watching these men at work was an eye opening experience for me. The fact that men put their lives at risk for such a pittance of a wage really shows the desperation and poverty abundant in this region. The following day we returned to the peak in the early hours of the morning. Ganda joined us at 3am to begin the climb, but unfortunately, due to high sulphuric activity that week, we weren’t allowed to begin ascending until 4am. Since the climb is around an hour long for an averagely fit person, we realised that this would mean missing the “blue fire” phenomenon that Kawah Ijien was famous for (ignited sulphuric gas that creates blue flames up to 5 metres high and only visible at night). Obviously Marc wanted to try capture photos of this and so we decided that we should separate so that I can go at my relatively slow pace and Marc can go at a faster pace. He ended up almost running up the mountain, getting help from a miner on his way up who carried Marc’s heavy camera bag for the last kilometre or so. He made it up in 40 mins, just in time to see the last of the blue flames from a distance (just our luck, tourists weren’t even allowed to go down to the water because of the danger of the sulphuric acid that week- the furthest we could go was the crater rim).
Anyway, that day was spent lulling around, taking photos, speaking to the many miners who wanted to tell us all about their mining experience and enjoying coffee and biscuits at the shack on the volcano.
The next day we made our way back to Bali, stopping overnight at a surfing town called Medewi on the west coast of Bali, where we enjoyed a meal in a restaurant full of Australians and a good night’s sleep before continuing the following day to Denpasar. Denpasar was a short stop, we just stopped at Immigration to pick up our passports with our Visa Extension and then found a hotel where we chilled for most of the day, before strolling along Legian where we booked our boat to tne Gilis for the following day and stopped for lunch and a quick catch up with Tom and John. And that was the end of our Bali trip for the time being.
-Vanessa-
Marc and Van Explore 