Ijen vulcano complex 🌋

After that loooong trip to Mount Bromo we were looking forward to arrive at our hostel at Banyuwangi because we were so exhausted. We finally wanted to have a good sleep and thought we had booked a nice hostel for relaxing one night and one day before starting our next hike to the Ijen vulcano complex.

Unfortunately it was not as relaxing and uncomplicated as we thought when we arrived. Our room in the hostel was kind of open so we had many mosquitoes inside. So Denise and me wanted to hang our mosquito net… whereby Denise got stung by a hornet 😳😳 We asked Amira, the manager of the hostel to help us to get rid of the hornet, which was the point where it started to become funny 😅Amira came with a badminton racket and tried to kill the hornet whereas Denise and me kind of cheered from the outside of the room 😃 she seemed to have some experience because she killed the hornet in the end (and also a cockroach which we then saw in the room)… both with the racket 😅 we were so tired after everything that had happened on that day…
We had some sleep (but the muezzin already called his prayer at 4 am in the morning 😣). Next day we only relaxed and went to bed very early because our Tour to the Ijen vulcano complex was about to start at half past midnight 😳

We had a tour booked and our driver brought us to the starting point of the hike where we arrived at 1:30 am. The others ate a Nasi Goreng before we started the hike to the Ijen crater with our headlamps (it’s always Nasi time). It began to rain during the uphill hike but our guide „Sule“ gave us some rain ponchos. The hike was less exhausting than we thought even if we hiked uphill all the time. After about one hour our group of about 12 people and our guide arrived at the edge of the crater. We saw a lot of other tourists on the hike and also a lot of locals who offered to carry us on wagons to earn money (must be sooo much effort for them 😳😞).
It was still dark when we started to hike down into the crater, which was kind of hard to do and felt sometimes more like climbing. We could already see the sulfur smoke coming out of the crater but we didn’t have to put on the masks yet, which were provided from the tour we booked to protect the lungs of the sulfur. It was also the first time that I saw sulfur in solid form, when I saw the mine workers carrying the sulfur up the crater. For me it felt very bad to see the minors doing their work, carrying the sulfur up the crater, whereas us tourists were climbing down into the crater. Sule told us that he has been a minor before he could start his guide job. The workers there are carrying between 70 to 100 kilograms each time they climb up the crater!! But they only earn about 2 to 3 euros for those 70 kilos… and it takes them so long to climb up and down again (and it is obviously Incredibly exhausting!!) so they can only do about two loads each day.. they often don’t have the money to afford good masks to protect themselves (or any mask at all!😳) and they wear bad rubber shoes for the climb… it was very sad to see. :( and us tourists are climbing down and up and make their work probably even more difficult which made me feel very very bad. ☹️ On the other hand tourism allows some of them (like Sule) to work as a tour guide which seemed to be at least a better job. Since Sule told us that he is still doing that dangerous work in the months in which no tourists are coming we gave him some money in the end, to support him (maybe to at least be able to buy a proper mask for the job). Sule is still such a warm hearted guy who wears a smile all the time.

Down in the crater it was still dark and there was a lot of sulfur smoke. We had to wear the protecting masks. We could see a little bit of that blue fire which is created by the burning of the sulfur when it starts to have contact with the air (I didn’t understand the cause of the reaction completely 😅).

When we climbed up again it began to get brighter and we could see the crater lake which is colored in an amazing blue.

Arriving on top of the crater the sun had begun to rise behind a mountain which allowed us to see the whole crater in day light - what an incredible beautiful view!

Also the landscape on our hike back to the parking spot was amazing!

We drove back to the hostel, where Amira prepared Mie Goreng (fried noodles) as breakfast for us. It was 9 am but felt like afternoon for me. We went to sleep afterwards until a shuttle arrived at lunch time to pick us up to drive us to our next stop: Red Island - relaxing, surfing and sunbathing sounded perfect for us after these adventurous days.Read more