The Blue Fire of Mt. Ijen

As I wrote in my last post, I was going on a tour to Mount Ijen 🌋 (another one of the many Indonesian volcanoes). Pickup was 9.30 pm on the 30th of October directly in Lovina. I was lucky with my driver again. I learned a lot about living as a local here on Bali. Amongst other things we also talked about wages and living costs 💸 My driver works for his day job as a security guard at a school in his village and gets up every morning at 5.30 am to work for 9-10 hours until 3pm. Doing that, he earns 1.200.000 IDR per month. He has a wife 👰and a 9-year old son 🧒 and calculates with 100.000 IDR per day for food etc. for all 3 of them. Because of this, they would be 1.800.000 IDR short of covering their monthly expenses with his security job alone. His wife works in a boutique 🛍️ but does not earn enough money either. Therefore he is driving tourists in the afternoon/evening. Luckily, he owns a house 🏡 so he does not have to worry about paying rent. COVID-19 must have been really devastating for Balinese people since their entire economy is directed at tourism. There are not a lot of other sources of income on the island. I have been in quite a few hostels now and I have heard a lot of times from the personnel that they had to close during that time or have just reopened again. Therefore, everyone is glad COVID is „officially over“ and tourism picks up again.

After a 1.5 hour drive 🚖 I took the ferry 🚢from Gilimanuk and arrived approximately at midnight on Java. The tour guide for the Ijen tour was already waiting for me at the harbour.
We picked up 3 more French tourists from their hotel and then drove up the hill to Ijen.
The car 🚗 had its fair share of difficulties to get us onto the mountain 🏔️ It came even to the point that - somewhere on the way - our driver had to roll backwards down the hill again for 50m (in a controlled way) to start a second attempt. That time everything went well.
Approximately at 2 am in the morning of the 31st of October we arrived at the base camp ⛺️ of Mt. Ijen. Last chance to go to the toilet and collect a gas mask 😷 or eat some breakfast before everyone (there must have been easily more than 100 people) started the ascent to the crater. We hiked under perfect conditions (clear night sky and full moon) 🌌 and went approximately an hour uphill on a steep and dusty slope to the crater. Some elderly or simply lazy tourists used the „taxi“ services 🦼 that the locals offered. Basically it was like a trailer for a car with a seat in it that two to three poor Indonesians would pull or push up the steep hill. It looked really exhausting to me.
Then we walked for half an hour on the crater to the entry point for the Blue Fire 🔥From there it was another hour of steep decent through rocky and partly slippery terrain 🧗 into the crater before we arrived at our destination at around 4 am - perfect timing. It was still dark and the Blue Fire was easy to spot. The masks protected our lungs 🫁 from the sulphur gas but nothing else. When the intense gas was blown into our direction by the wind, our eyes 👀 started to burn. It was not bearable for long to be near the Blue Fire. „But how is the Blue Fire actually created?“, you might ask. When the sulphur gas from within the volcano reaches the surface, it can be up to 600° C hot. Therefore, the sulphur immediately ignites and erupts with blue flames 🔥 into the air (due to lower temperatures and pressures at the surface). However, there were gas pipes in place between the sulphur gas and the area to watch the blue fire. I could be wrong but the gas might be artificially brought there for display to the tourists. Anyways, after a while we started our ascent out of the crater again to watch the sunrise 🌅 We couldn’t actually see the sun because another high mountain was blocking it. Instead we marvelled at the beautiful colours of the opposite side of the sky. At 6 am we had seen enough and went back to the base camp to have some Mei Goreng and a coffee for breakfast. ☕️
After breakfast, we were brought to our hotel respectively hostel. Everyone (but the driver) was sleeping in the car. 😅

In my hostel I was warmly greeted by the staff, took a shower 🚿 and waited for the time to check in. When I got into the room, I took a little early afternoon nap 😴 The night had been exhausting and my body needed rest. An hour later I woke up again and tried to prepare my onward travel to Jakarta for the next day. To my surprise I found out that my flight to Jakarta had been cancelled 😳 I needed a few moments to understand the gravity of the situation: my flight ✈️ to Japan - that I had booked many months ago for hundreds of EURs - was leaving on the 2nd of November. If I didn’t go to Jakarta on the next day, I would miss that flight to Japan. 🥺
Luckily, the staff of my hostel was super helpful 👍 and supported me in contacting the airline and clarifying the situation: apparently, I was rebooked to an earlier flight on the same day and I didn’t receive a notification from the airline. 😤 Shout out to Mutia and her team. 🙏 If it wasn’t for them, I would be probably stuck in Banyuwangi/Indonesia right now. 😅 I mean, there is worse but I would have completely screwed up my travel plans for the coming months.Read more