Day 106 - Mount Bromo and Happy New Years from a hotel lobby!

I was ready to leave at 3 am. We were given a boxed breakfast that consisted of 2 pieces of stale bread, a packet of jam and butter, a mini banana and little thing of water. It'll do I guess. We were supposed to leave at 3:30am but they ended up taking all the locals up to the volcano first. Our jeep didn't arrive until around 4am and this thing looked like it was form the 70s and had been through a war or 2.

The jeep dropped us off near the bottom of the hill and parked there. We had to walk up this steep hill at 4 am without flashlights to the viewpoint. The parking spots further up were taken by locals that had arrived earlier. As I walked up past all the other jeeps that had arrived earlier, I was blinded by the headlights of motorcycles that were trying to make money by driving you to the top of the viewpoint. It was exhausting getting to the top as you had to weave around motorcycles, people and jeeps.

Upon arrival at the viewpoint it was jammed with locals there to see the sunrise. I had rented a jacket from the guesthouse the night before because I was told it was really cold up at the viewpoint. It was actually quite warm at about 10-15C and a fleece was good enough. The locals however were freezing. I was highly entertained by the amounts of clothes everyone was wearing. They were all wearing hats, gloves, scarves and down filled jackets. It was a little overkill but if you think about it, being out in the cold for them is more of novelty because it never gets cold unless you're on a mountain.

The sunrise was quite disappointing because it was so foggy you couldn't see 10 feet in front of you. Needless to say we couldn't see the volcano or the sunrise for that matter. I'll just have to imagine them and draw them into my photos.

We were driven back down the mountain and were able to walk up to the Mount Bromo crater and see the live volcano. Upon arrival, there were so many people there with their horses who were getting people to hire them to go up the mountain instead of walking. The horses here in Indonesia, like the people are really small. The size of ponies. I chose to walk.

As I got closer to the staircase up to the crater, the volcano started to of gas sulfuric acid. It was hard to breathe. The easiest thing was to to wet my fleece and breathe through it instead. At the top of the mountain I could see the crater where all the gas was coming from. It was very cool. I'd never been so close to an active volcano in my life. The sky was still really overcast and the view was lost.

On the way back to the guesthouse we were told we were leaving right away. I ran upstairs to pack my stuff and opened my packed breakfast only to realize that someone had eaten half of it while I had left it in the jeep. The Minivan dropped us off in Probolinggo where we caught a bus to Bali. Thank god it was a proper coach. The chairs reclined and the ride was actually quite good.

We arrived at the bus station in Denpasar at 9pm and had to find accommodation on New Year's Eve. Everywhere we went was completely booked out. We ended up in the lobby of a posh hotel called the Aston and ended up using their wireless to find places to call about accomodation. At midnight we were still in the lobby and the hotel manager came up to us to tell us that he had a cancellation and that he would give us his discounted rate for it. His discounted rate was $120 a night. We took it. It turned out to be the most amazing room I've ever stayed in. The beds were brand new, plasma TV, marble floors, sofa and coffee table. Brilliant! It was totally worth it! Happy New Year!