Since i've been in Indonesia (for almost three months now), I've been wanting to explore the beautiful area where Mt. Bromo resides. I've been talking about it for a few weeks with some of my friends and we finally set a date. The train alone took almost 10 hours to get to Probolinggo (the area of Mount Bromo) from Jogja and it was only bearable because of the people I got to sit with. We left around 7 am and arrived around 5, but it took about an hour to get to the village we were staying in and bargaining took quite some time to talk down the prices for transportation to get where we were going. When we arrived you could see so many stars and the weather felt amazing, like being back home (Los Angeles) during October. The air was so brisk and I didn't sweat the moment I got out of the car. We stayed in a small village near Mt. Bromo called Ngadirejo with a family that are farmers. Waking up to so much greenery was a sight for sore eyes. Even going for walks around the village felt so welcoming with everyone greeting you like they already knew you.
On our first night we had to sleep pretty early, around 10 pm, because we had to wake up at 2 am to catch sunrise. So worth it. Even though I was pretty exhausted, I jumped into the back of this jeep half awake and for about an hour we headed to Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park. It was pretty insane how much the price difference was between a local and foreigner (Rp. 250.000 vs. Rp. 26.000). That's about $2 vs $20. Anyways, we all "passed" for locals so it was fine. After being dropped off, we walked up the mountain for 20-30 minutes and arrived to our sightseeing destination. There were so many people, but we ended up finding a nice quiet spot with a nice view of the mountains. Once sunrise started some of us moved around to see the main view of it, but it was difficult for a bit to get around because of so many people taking pictures. As I squeezed my way through the crowd I met some nice people from Switzerland, Germany and Singapore. Then there were some not so nice people, but I just ignored them and got all of the shots that I wanted anyways.
After about an hour, the fog finally cleared and you could see the entire view in all its glory. I honestly can't describe how beautiful this was. Even pictures couldn't do this place justice. I was speechless and I didn't want to leave. You could see the mist around the crater and the fog moving constantly and the way the light was hitting everything was unbelievable. I recommend everyone to come here and experience it because it is completely worth it. After ALL of the photos were taken we headed back to the Jeep (We realized it was only 7 am and that was pretty crazy). We headed to the Kawah Gunung Bromo (Bromo Volcano Crater) and its a nice medium hike up to the top to see the crater in its entirety. I actually felt pretty sick halfway through the hike so I had to head back and lay down. My friends said it was pretty intense and took some parkour to get up there so i'm pretty glad I went back when I did.
Bukit Teletabis (Teletubies Hill) was our next stop and it was a short drive from the crater. It was another beautiful serene view to just take in. You could frolic all day long if you wanted, but we were all pretty exhausted. We headed back home, stopped once to take some more pictures and finally arrived back to our village. It was only 11:30 am and we all just wanted to sleep. I knocked out pretty hard and didn't wake up until about 2 pm. Having barely any internet was pretty relaxing so we played card games and heads up which was pretty entertaining for a while and then went for a nice walk around the village. Played some more games and I headed to bed early once again because I was still pretty tired. I woke up at 5 am to watch the sun rise and went back to bed, but woke up to I don't even know what at 7 am and just relaxed around the house for a bit. We had our breakfast, got cleaned up and went for another walk. And again, so relaxing. The sun hitting your face, the cool breeze against your skin and just having nice small talk with your friends, it was really great. We headed back to the train station by bus and caught an angkot (another kind of bus, but way smaller and only Rp. 5000/$.38). We actually arrived in Yogyakarta earlier than I thought we would get there compared to on the way to Bromo. Once we arrived we had to eat and get some satay and it totally hit the spot. It was another amazing weekend spent here in Indonesia and I can't wait to come back.