19:00 - After a 14 hour car ride from Jogja — this time we went in style in a pri­vate car, com­plete with both seat belts and AC! — we arrived to base camp at a nearby cof­fee plan­ta­tion.  At the check­point into the region (read: shake­down) we got out of the car, no lights around, looked up and I thought, “Is the sky sick?”.  I’m not wax­ing all poetic or any­thing but I have never seen so many stars, hon­estly, there were more white dots than black patches.

04:30 — Rise and (no) shine and on to the foot of Ijen Crater.

05:30 — Our dri­ver pro­cured a guide for our trek up the vol­cano and we were off.  The hun­dreds of hours of Muay Thai did noth­ing to pre­pare me for the near-sprint-pace that home­boy in his flip flops was try­ing to keep up the steep incline that is 3km!  Nonethe­less, we were up for the chal­lenge, though at times felt like we were breath­ing in through cof­fee stir sticks with the alti­tude mak­ing our limbs feel like lead and heads hazy, over­tak­ing other climbers like we were in the car­pool lane dur­ing rush hour.  We hit our stride and made it to the lip of the vol­cano in (what must be a record) 55 min­utes all the while pass­ing locals trans­port­ing dou­ble bas­kets of sul­phur weigh­ing nearly 65 kilos like they were out for a leisurely stroll.

07:00 — We began our descent into the crater where wafts of smoke and sul­phur went from unpleas­ant to unbear­able dur­ing the 500 meters of nego­ti­at­ing our foot­ing down the inner wall.  It is cus­tom­ary to give the trans­porters cig­a­rettes or candy to ease their climb and we saw quite a few guys smok­ing while climb­ing up the steep incline wear­ing either flip flops or wellies — this roundtrip is exe­cuted mul­ti­ple times daily.  Down near the sul­phur lake we could only stand the fumes for a few min­utes while we snapped a few pho­tos and then made our way back.

09:00 — The way down was a breeze for our lungs and a dis­as­ter for our knees and shins but a wel­comed change.  The guide was impressed with the pace that we main­tained — which worked out fine for our com­pet­i­tive natures and need for some solid exercise.

10:30 — We arrived at the Javanese ferry port and were off to con­tinue our morn­ing on the beau­ti­ful island of Bali.

[View Slideshow]