May 2006 - This 9 days overland trip from Central Java to Bali was one I shall remember for ages. Just about 3 weeks before Java’s killer quake, we touched down in Solo (Surakarta) and headed to Yogyakarta in the midst of Mt Merapi’s rage and rumbling. Fondly known as Jogja, the royal town is the popular base for visits to World Heritage Sites of Borobudur and Prambanan, and of course to watch the lava of Merapi.

After Jogja, we headed nearly 9 hours east to Probolinggo in a van shared with a few friendly westerners. After some briefing at the tourist office in Probolinggo, we were ushered into another van with more adventurous westerners for a 1 hour uphill ride to Bromo-Tengger-Semeru National Park. By the time we arrived at our guesthouse, it was already dark and we were freezing, starving and tired.

The Bromo caldera view from Mt Penanjakan over sunrise was superb….it was so otherworldly. My buddy PC simply commented it looked unreal. Mt Semeru puffing smoke far yonder brought back memory of the mighty Mt Merapi in Jogja…We then went back to the jeep for a ride through the morning misty sand of sea to the foot of Mt Bromo itself. It was like a ride in a timeless zone. We could not see far ahead as the fog was thick.

Further 6 hours journey on road, our next destination was the Kawah Ijen, the sulphur collection site in the Ijen Plateau. An awesome geographic wonder, this high country region is also one of Indonesia’s premier agro-tourism destinations. Made up of 6 volcanic peaks from 1200-3050m, the whole eastern Java is dominated by the high and seldom visited Ijen Plateau. This one-of-a-kind plateau offers savanna landscapes, rugged panoramas, cool weather, tree-sentinelled country roads, grand hiking and a unique bright yellow-green crater lake. A truly intriguing phenomena.

It was a pleasant hike up to the Ijen crater, but the hike down to the sulphur collection site was quite daunting. The trail was full of wicked loose rocks, and one has to be cautius and applied the art of balancing. I was also breathing hard through face mask to avoid inhaling the hazardous sulphurous fumes. Very often, we would come across into some sturdy local workers carrying 2 baskets of sulphur slabs balanced on a pole made from bamboo ampel. Life was hard, and we felt more than happy to give them all the candies we had…

The journey to Ketapang ferry terminal took less than 2 hours though village roads. After spending 4.5 days in the beautiful land of Java, we finally bade farewell to Java and embarked on another extraordinary journey to Bali.

Check out the next entry on Bali.