Vulkantour to Ijen

Saturday 11pm and it started...

The driver named Manggo was there on time and picked me up directly from the hotel. I spent the evening on the beach enjoying the starry sky. First, we went to the harbor where we wanted to take the ferry to the island of Java. Until then, he told me some information about the Ijen.

It is still a very active volcano at an altitude of 2386m. The crater lake is considered one of the most toxic acid barrels. Through pipes, large amounts of sulfuric steam emerge, which settles and the later stone is built by young men. They tirelessly carry up to 100 kilos of heavy baskets out of the crater every day along a very uncomfortable path. The sulfuric steam is sometimes so corrosive that even with a mask you can hardly breathe. In addition, the eyes were burning. But the guys just laughed and casually lit a cigarette. Well, let's see who can still laugh here in 50 years 💀🙈

At least after the ferry, we continued with a jeep to the base camp at Ijen. It was a pleasant 5 degrees. Of course, I had prepared myself for a summer vacation, so I had warm clothes, long pants, and an extremely thin rain jacket with me😂

Well, at least then the hike to the summit started with my guide. Mr. M 😂 A funny guy who was probably one of the first guides, he knew every single stone by heart. But the ascent was more than tough. It went about 1 1/2 hours uphill at a slope of 40 degrees. You had to be good on your feet. So the Elbe Sandstone Mountains still have a lot to learn from it. The good thing about it was that it became pleasantly warm and you trained all your muscles on the side 😂

Fortunately, we were two people, so we were able to make good progress. There were crowds of people here and you could see a flashlight at the next one. When we finally reached the top, we immediately went down again, into the crater. And what a descent it was. Just passing by boulders and it was mostly climbing. The smoke also became increasingly corrosive. But what wouldn't you do. The good thing was that I took a different route than everyone else and we went directly to the workers and were right at the big sulfur pool. It was soooooo impressive. Climbing out of the crater, we also went up to the summit and 'slept' for another hour. That's when I realized how chilly it was.

Well, shortly after 5 o'clock, the sunrise started. AMAZING... this scenery

At some point, we went back down the mountain and we were at the base camp. Again, this was a great calf workout 👍

Afterwards, I drove back to the harbor with the jeep and headed back to Bali. During that time, I also organized my further transport towards the south. I thought that the day was already over, so I might as well do it right away. The journey also took over 4 hours, but now I'm in Canggu. Arriving at the hotel, I went straight to bed and slept 😴 😴