Mount Bromo 🌋

It was a loooong, adventurous and exhausting travel to Mount Bromo - but in the end totally worth it!
In total it took us about 10 hours to get to Cemorolawang from Semarang.

From Semarang to Surabaya by train 🚊:
Actually the train to Surabaya was totally fine and only about 4 hours.

From Surabaya to Probolinggo by bus 🚌:
When we got to the bus station in Surabaya it started to become weird. So many people were trying to convince us to take their bus to Probolinggo, they were very intrusive and the whole thing was very unpleasant. Luckily we had read in a blog which bus company should be a serious one (or at least one of the more serious ones…) and so we were looking out for that one. We felt like we still paid much more than the locals for the ticket.

From Probolinggo to Cemorolawang by mini bus 🚎:
After about 2 hours we arrived in Probolinggo but unfortunately there was an even worse situation. The mini busses to Cemorolawang are only driving when all seats are paid for but there were no tourists anymore. Again many people were intrusive, trying to convince us to take their bus and pay more money than usual for it. At that point we were already so frustrated and exhausted. Tried to organize a Grab taxi but he told us he couldn‘t pick us up in that „bison area“. Back then we didn’t understand yet what he meant. So we walked to another pick up point, happy to get away from the weird people at the bus station. Unfortunately the people followed us and threatened another mini bus driver who wanted to take us to Cemorolawang for a normal price, so that man drove away. We were kind of scared, since it slowly got dark and we didn’t have an idea what to do. The weird men followed us still and in the end we accepted their offer even if we were scared. But we had no alternative and went into their minivan (prepared a knife and pepper spray inside of it because we didn’t feel safe😳) …after 2 hours of a bumpy road we finally arrived in Cemorolawang - so relieved 😮‍💨 but also sooo exhausted. Jonas had googled the weird situation that we got into and told us that it is widely known that a mafia is controlling the area around Mount Bromo. Our hostel owner confirmed it.

Finally!!! Hike to the view point and Mount Bromo 🌋
We started the hike with our headlamps at 3:00 am in the morning. The four of us and Jules, a french guy that we met wore thick clothes because it was so much colder in that area (and especially in the middle of the night) than in indonesia in general. We were already freezing during the night when we slept. In the end I wore way to many clothes because the uphill hike warmed us up. I had to stop to get rid of clothes 4 times 😃 first we walked on a main road, later on a small rocky path to get up to the viewpoint where we arrived 2 hours later. A beautiful sunrise and a Noodle soup (at 6 am😅) were awaiting us. The view on Mount Bromo was incredible.😍 Even if it was still morning it started to get very warm when we went downhill again, starting our way to the Mount Bromo crater, which took us again almost two hours I think.
When we arrived on the edge of the crater me and Denise were pretty exhausted. But it was nice to see the crater and the offerings on top of it. In the tradition of Indonesian people mountains and especially vulcanos are said to be in favor of the people when they offer something up to them.
After we came back to the hostel we started our way back to Probolinggo (to the mafia nest 😅) which was again a very unpleasant stopover. We took a bus which should take us in the direction of Banyuwangi - the starting point for the next vulcano hike. The bus drive was awful. It was said to be a 6 hour drive, but in the end it took us almost 9 hours with the bus - without AC, but with guitar playing locals in the bus who were asking for money and smoking people. 😩When we finally arrived in Banyuwangi it was already dark and unfortunately the bus brought us to a station which was on the outside of the city center where no grab or taxi was coming to. We had to wait and organize for one hour or so until our hostel sent us a shuttle to pick us up.

maybe we should have booked a tour including guides and transport for the Bromo trip which would have been a lot less complicated, but we wanted to do the whole thing on our own and so it ended up to be a veeeery long day 😮‍💨😅Read more