Sunrise over Mount Bromo.

Knock – knock…“Pagi!” was what woke us up at 3:15 on Thursday morning, well we both had a shitty nights sleep on probably the worst bed in existence but I had been  awake for a good hour before… Still, we booked the sunrise Jeep tour and now it seems it was time to get on with it!

We dragged ourselves up and slung on as many layers as we had, knocked up an Extra Joss and gulped that down, threw on our hired coats (it’s cold there in the day and at silly o’clock it’s not much above zero) and made our way to reception where the Jeeps were waiting.

After several desperate cigarettes we were finally ready to leave they piled us into the back of a beefy jacked up Jeep and set off down the same road we had passed down the day before towards the sand sea.

Nobody was really keen on conversation at that hour, instead everyone watched hypnotized as the driver expertly picked his way across the sand sea at about 60 km/h in zero visibility… It was zero visibility because the large crater that surrounds Bromo and makes up the sand sea actually fills up with clouds in the cool of the night much like a bath fills with bubbles.

How the hell the driver found the one track he was looking for I’ll never know but he did and soon enough we were across the sand and steadily climbing towards the viewpoint. Around the edge of the sand sea are where all the towns and villages sit but on the northern side is a hill much higher than Bromo itself and is probably the highest point around for miles, apart from a distant mountain (I forget it’s name) that looms over everything and is the highest in all of Java.

It took us a good half hour of high revs and steep bumpy roads before we reached the little village at the top and when we finally fell out of the back of the Jeep it was suddenly apparent that Bromo’s surrounding towns were not empty and void but stuffed with tourists, there were Jeeps everywhere all spilling full loads of snap happy tourists into perfectly situated coffee shops. No joke there were hundreds of them!

Georgie and I were obviously drawn to the coffee like a mosquito to a bear arse cheek and with every sip we pulled ourselves a little loser together and got our heads around being up at that ungodly hour.

It was all worth it as soon as we made the short but hard walk up the hill to the viewpoint, even with minimal light it was stunning, from up there it felt like we could see everything in the whole world.

Looking down on the sand sea we had just crossed covered in a blanket of white fluffy cloud made you realise just how small we are and even the mighty Bromo looked like nothing more than a small statue you might put on your coffee table. We stood up on the handrail at the front because there was already a keen bunch of people there all sporting huge cameras with 2 ft lenses and it was clear that as soon as everyone else finishes their coffee – front row space would be a premium!

The sun slowly laboured over the horizon and turned the sky a violent orange, we just stood – and watched, with every minute the epic landscape and the beauty of it all intensified just like the eastern sky. 

We stood for a couple of hours watching the landscape change with the light and watching Bromo gently puffing out its eggy clouds, from up there that’s all it looked like, nothing more than a little fart, a mere love puff from the tiny volcano but we knew different! We knew it was in fact a huge ever-moving wall of acrid, eggy but fluffy stench.

We took some coffee with the other nutters from our Jeep before heading back down the windy roads, once the sun was up and we could see where we were going it was all the more impressive that our driver had managed to get us up there in the dark and in one piece, it was then we found out from the others that the tour also included a trip over to Bromo itself… Bonus!

The clouds were still heavily laying in the sand sea and with the sun now properly up it was a complete white out, as we drew near to Bromo faint shapes and shadows became locals on horses wanting to sell a ride up to the stairs, I didn’t  not enjoy horse riding but I didn’t love it and my arse was definitely not ready for another beating so we opted to walk up. I think we made it halfway to the steps before the clouds began to dissolve in the sun and seeing as we had been up the bugger the day before and not had any breakfast we decided against another ascent and instead sat on a rock and watched fat people jiggle their way up on the poor little horses… Pure comedy!

When we arrived back at our guest house we had maybe twenty minutes to have breakfast and get our shit together before the bus left for Probolingo, a small town where we could catch another bus back to Bali… So we scoffed and we packed like madmen.

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