Climbing the volcano: Ijen (Java tour 8)

As so often, we started early in the morning: This time not for the sunrise, but for a climb to the Ijen volcano, an active volcano in East Java, before the heat and dust of the day set in.

We drove with a jeep at 4 o'clock from the hotel to the Ijen base camp at an altitude of 1850 meters. From there we continued on foot to the crater rim, which is located at an altitude of 2386 meters.

On the way, we met miners who walked to the crater with their carts to extract sulfur in one of the two craters of Ijen.

But some of them had also reoriented themselves and were instead driving tired tourists down the mountain in their wheelbarrow-like carts.

The others carried baskets of sulfur weighing about 70 kg from the mine up to the crater rim and then to the base station.

Entering the crater is prohibited for tourists due to the dangerous sulfur fumes, but many still ventured to descend. With self-brought or borrowed (another source of income for the miners) gas masks, they descended into the crater to see the large lake and the sulfur fumes up close.

The lake has a beautiful color. Although the turquoise-green of the lake invites you to swim, it is better to refrain from doing so as it consists of highly concentrated sulfuric acid.

On the way back, we drove through the jungle with our jeep.

Here we saw clove trees and could discover what we had previously only seen in dried form at Christmas on the tree.

Then it was time to say goodbye to Java: We took the ferry to Bali.

View of Java

The crossing is only 4 km long, but it should take about an hour. At first, we wondered about that - until we realized that the traffic on the water is similar to the traffic on land... Sometimes we were also standing still and waiting for the traffic to continue.

Our tour guide also told us that during storms, the ports are sometimes closed and you have to wait for hours on the water before you can go ashore. Fortunately, this did not happen to us and we safely reached Bali, where the next part of our journey began... (to be continued :) )