Mesmerising East Java - Mount Bromo

I popped by East Java, Mount Bromo from 01 Dec to 05 Dec with 3 other friends of a common hobby. This place is long captured my attention for a mystical milky ways and fiery volcano and it was with great excitement that I finally confirmed the trip.

However, before the pictures part, allow me a short rant.  If you have came to this blog post because you are googling details for your own trip, the next paragraph might be of particular importance to you, with regards to my tour guide.

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Our tour guide is Hafdiz Wahyudi

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HVWYD351?fref=ts

and his bio is listed as,

Owner at Dukun gunung management and Owner at bromobackpacker.com

It took us a while to finally agree on a suitable itinerary. Whilst it can be argued that my side is picky, it is hardly acceptable for a photography journey to visit a Apple Farm to pick apples. I guessed I might have realised on his insistent to visit the Apple Farm.

For your info, our itinerary is as such:

1 Dec (Surabaya to Bondowoso)·         Pickup from Juanda International Airport at 1255hrs

·         6 to 7 hrs drive to Bondowoso

·         Check-in at Ijen View hotel for 1x night

 2 Dec (Mount Ijen to Mount Bromo)·         At 0030hrs, drive to Ijen startpoint

·         Reach Ijen startpoint at 0200hrs

·         Approximately 1hr of climbing/hiking

·         Sunrise at 0530hrs

·         Leave Ijen at 0700hrs

·         5 to 6 hrs drive to Surabaya

·         Reach at approximately 1500 to 1600hrs

·         Check-in Adas Atas homestay for 1x night

·         Free and easy

 3 Dec (Mount Bromo Tour)·         At 0300hrs, start Bromo sunrise tour

·         Location is Mount Penanjakan Viewpoint 1

·         Stay until after sunrise(Assume 0530hrs)

·         Drive through Lautan Pasir to Bromo Crater

·         Check-in Wisma Adas Hotel for 2x nights

·         Breakfast and rest

·         At 1600hrs, start sunset tour at Metigen Hill(10 mins journey)

·         Milky Way shoot at 2300hrs at Metigen Hill

 4 Dec (Mount Bromo Tour)·         Sunrise at Mount Penanjakan Viewpoint 2

·         Traditional House of Bromo(???)

·         Lunch at Photo Gallery “Java Banana” Bromo

·         Back to hotel for short rest

·         Sunset at Seruni Point(West of Cemara Indah Hotel)

 5 Dec (Mount Bromo to Madakaripura to Surabaya)

·         Breakfast at hotel then proceed to check-out

·         1 hr drive to Madakaripura Waterfall

·         By 1500hrs reach airport

·         End of tour

Upon arrival, Hafidz collected 30% of the total trip cost (our total trip cost was Rupiah 14 000 000), and it was initially agreed that the remaining 70% will be paid at the end of our trip.

His service was excellent from Day 1 to 3, accompanying us for all our trips and following the itinerary. However, on the third night he asked for the remaining 70%, which he claimed is needed to pay for the remaining accomodations and also that a e-Invoice will be emailed to me the following day, something which I did not receive 2 weeks after the trip ended.

After collecting all the trip money, he basically just disappeared! We never saw him again and we were left on our own with a driver that has no knowledge of English and uncontactable. Because every trip has a different driver, we basically were following whoever seems like a legit tour guide. We might not even know if we could have followed the wrong driver/guide!

In addition, the itinerary was non-existent after we paid fully. On the 3rd day, we checked into a traditional homestay, which basically has no food supply and no drinking water, with a room so bare that it shames even the most barest of accomodation. We argued with Hafidz that we were supposed to go for a sunset and milky way tour on that night but Hafidz said otherwise. So, we were basically left on our own, being cheated on one night worth of tour.

On the 4th day, we were told to assemble at 2am for the sunrise tour, which makes perfect sense. However, based on our experience with Hafidz the previous day, I checked with him again on the assemble time + location to assemble.

To my greatest shock, he told us, in his exact words to "go there our own, its just 5km away and a 15 mins hike will do. Just follow the rest of the tourist who will be walking in the same direction and you will reach there".

Yes! You read that right! Our tour guide is telling us to walk to the location ourselves in the dark and to simply follow the crowd!

Lastly, I had repeated myself pre-trip that I wanted to stay in this particular hotel which had super good ratings on Tripadvisor.com. I was told by Hafidz that it was fully booked during my stay there and he was unable to book any room for me.

When I was there, I just popped by the hotel and enquire on the vacancy. I was informed that yes, there are rooms for the night! I realised that because our tour guide's wife, brother-in-law and god knows who are working in the hotel that he checked us in, it was highly likely that it was family-run hotel and he wanted to earn money for his own profits.

In summary - a very poor guide. If you are planning a trip to bromo, avoid this guy at all cost.

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Rant completed!

Time for the images.

Day 1 - Ijen Crater.

Our jaws dropped the moment we stepped out of the car. The stars above were absolutely STUNNING and we could even see Milky Way with our naked eyes!

A pity that we could not stop to capture the Milky Way, as we were racing against time to reach the Ijen Crater, alternatively known as the Blue Sulphur Flame/Fire.

The first half consist of a very long and steep ascend up a muddy and rocky trek. The peak was cold, but it didn't matter to me as I was already sweating profusely from the ascend.

We saw a hint of blue flame from the peak, and we thought that was it.

But, our tour guide said to get closer to the peak, we had to descend down the mountain. By descend, I meant finding available rocks to grab a foothold and descending. Gloves is a must as you will be grabbing on to slippery and sharp rocks for additional support.

By the time we descended and reach the foot, we only had about 30 minutes to capture the blue flame. This severely limited our ability to locate a good framing composition.

At last, I simply settled for this:

Upon daybreak, the blue flame will no longer be visible, and is replaced by yellow rocks and trails of smoke.

Thus, you should always provide ample time beforehand.

Amazingly, throughout our ascend and descend, we will regularly walked past miners who were carrying huge piles of raw rocks (which I presume to be sulphur rocks).

The rocky path you see in the picture above is how our ascend from the peak to the foot of the mountain looks like.

Its amazing how humans could adapt to every situation and circumstances. It definitely made me realised how wonderful my life is, for sure.

It is sunrise by the time we hike back towards our car and you can see miners walking back to the sulphur site to extract more rocks.

After the tiring and sweaty hike, we headed back to the hotel and rest for the day. We explored our hotel at night and was lucky that our hotel is facing Mount Bromo, thus presented us with the opportunity to play with some long exposures.

The "target" of our light trail is actually Mount Bromo.

We explored further high up and this is a short overview of how our accommodation area in Mount Bromo looks like.

At Day 3, we checked out of Mount Bromo and drove up the Ngadas Village, a source of my complaint at the start of this post. The road was windy, but not as rocky was the initial roads that we experienced on our way up to Bromo Accommodation.

Its not exaggerating to say that we were literally playing with the clouds on our way up.

We checked into our homestay, and this was our room. It was two to a room and as earlier mention, it...was...very...bare.

There is no drinking water supply and the heater in our bathroom was not working (we did not bath during our stay there). There is no convenience stall for us to find food and we were starving until the owner brought food for us.

We realised, that we were shortchanged of our sunset + Milky Way tour and we had to hunt for signal for our mobile phones before we could call Hafidz. As there was no signal in the village, we packed our gears and commenced our photography-walkabout-cum-hunting-for-signal trip.

First thing first, this was the view which greeted us once we open our door.

After a mere 20 minutes, it started to rain heavily! We took shelter under a big tree but still could not get any signal on our Indonesian mobile lines. As we were at our wits end, we used our Singapore mobile lines and called Hafidz and the argument started (refer to above...)

We ran back to our accommodation and sat around the balcony, waiting for dinner from the homestay owner, who was nowhere in sight. Sighs.

After dinner, we took some shots of the nightscapes, before finally turning in for the night. We felt like we wasted one day of our trip. Pity our money.

It was a uncomfortable sleep, not least because there was two statues staring at us across our bed. The night was cold and the blanket provided wasn't adequate to keep us warm.

At local time, 6am. I woke up to find the sunlight seeping in through the holes of the walls. I took my gear, and stepped out for a look.

We waited and an unfamiliar jeep arrived to pick us up. Normally we would have hesitated, but seeing as we were the only tourist here, we blindly followed the driver.

The driver told my friend that we will be heading back to Bromo accommodation, stopping at Coban Pelangi Waterfall midway.

A trek through the jungle is a must to reach the waterfall.

The foot of the waterfall presents some nice scenes for long exposures. As we were in slippers, we walked right into the water with our tripod to explore. The water was very cooling, in contrast with the weather, but it was quite difficult to locate a firm foothold for our tripod legs.

Reaching the last flight of stairs before the waterfall, the water-spray could be felt immediately.

Tip for future visitors: make sure your camera and lens is well protected from the elements (weather-resistant will be ideal) and you are prepared to get wet.

There is a small shop selling snacks about 10 minutes away from this waterfall, and you will definitely passby it when walking back.

 

Although it is small, it provides a much needed relief and water point for us, especially since our horrible night previously.

After this point, the driver drove us back to Bromo accommodation. Sensing that we were photographers, he stopped at scenic places for us to take photos, including this huge place called the Savannahs.

Hafidz had previously brought us here, but dropped us off at the wrong point, where it was all black terrain instead of the lush green area you can see in the following pictures.

Ironic that even the driver is a much better guide than our paid guide.

The next day, we went to Mount Bromo itself. Ok, its pretty boring, save for the horse ride. The horse ride isn't expensive and it allows you to conserve much needed energy to climb the stairs up Mount Bromo.

The path you see here is where the horse ride will cover.

The horsemen were pretty cool though.

The following, and last day of our trip, we went to Viewpoint 2, Seruni Point. The whole trip didn't yield a single nice sunrise or sunset point and despite being discouraged, we gave ourselves one last chance and woke up to Viewpoint 2.

and Boy, was it worth it.

Arriving there shortly before twilight, the clouds gave us mix signals. At one point it was too clouded and at others, it provided the backdrop for a spectacular burst of colours from the sunrise.

The image below was shot during twilight. The light trails on the right are from the numerous jeeps and a red glow from a faraway volcano which was invisible to our naked eyes.

then, came sunrise.

End of trip!

We opted to have one rest day in Surabaya Airport - IBIS budget hotel. Although it contains the word "budget" and was indeed, cheap, it was one of the cleanest hotel I've come across.

Definitely a must-stay if you are looking for a night of rest before returning back to your home country.