Kawah Ijen

Back on the first weekend of October, I knocked another volcano off of my Indonesian Bucket List. Kawa Ijen is located on the eastern end of Java and is famous for its blue flames, billowing sulphur plumes, and the incredibly hardworking miners that harvest the sulphur from the depths of the volcano’s crater.

Ijen is relatively close to Bali - only about 200km from Sanur - making it a reasonable destination for the weekend. Of course, in reality, travel throughout Indonesia is never straightforward. We took a 45-minute cab drive from my house in Sanur (update: I moved into a new place!) to the bus station in Ubung, which is within the city of Denpasar.

Not entirely relevant to this blog post, but here's my new place!

Upon reaching the bus station, we were immediately harassed by about ten people asking us where we were headed. We’d read ahead and knew that there were two options to get to Gilimanuk (at the northwestern end of Bali) – a small, cheap, local bus for about $5 (nicknamed a chicken bus), or a larger coach bus with A/C for about $12. After ignoring the hawkers and heading for a ticket booth, we were told to inquire about tickets at the buses themselves.

Lil local bus - yay or nay?

Once we’d seen the $5 local bus, we were pretty sure we didn’t want to spend 4 or 5 hours in its hot, cramped interior, especially since we knew we wouldn’t be getting a decent sleep that night. We figured we could relax a bit more on the fancy bus; but they wanted to charge us about $17 each. My bargaining instinct kicked in and I tried to get them down to the price we’d read online, but they were barely budging and I couldn’t get them lower than $15. Cue a 20-minute standoff where Tobin and I debated the merits of each bus and I became increasingly frustrated before we finally paid $14 each to take the fancy cold bus.

It was a four-hour ride that I wish I could say was uneventful, but in reality we hit a motorbiker before we’d even made it out of Denpasar. The person appeared to be okay, and as usual more concerned about the condition of their motorbike than themselves. A representative of the bus company hopped off of the bus to stay behind and sort out the situation, and we continued on our way.

Ferries travelling between Bali and Java.

We reached Gilimanuk at dusk and took a short ferry ride across the bubbling straight between Bali and Java. On the other side, we received curt instructions to get off of the bus, which was confusing because we’d been informed would take us all the way to Banyuwangi. Clearly this was not the case. Instead, we were left to our own devices, aka a local taxi driver pestered us until we relented and paid him to take us into town.

This place was pretty weird.

In Banyuwangi, we met up with Richard, Tara, and two of Richard’s colleagues at possibly the world’s most bizarre accommodation. The enclosed “courtyard,” painted a garish green, featured an indoor fishpond, two pet turtles, a fake rock wall with giant swans, and a set of fake log stools. I’ve definitely never seen anything like it, but it was still a great place to catch up with the recent newlyweds!

After a quick dinner, we enjoyed a brief three-hour rest before our early volcano start. We hopped into a couple of vehicles organized by our trip guide. Tobin and I were in a car with a stranger who’d been added to our group, a fellow who did not speak a word to any of us for the entire excursion. We were treated to a joyful hour and a half of pop hits from about five years ago, blasted as loud as possible, as our driver tried to stay awake. We obviously did not sleep either.

Just after 2am we made it to the base of Kawah Ijen and joined the hordes of people making the trek up in the dark. Our crew was intent on making a speedy ascent, and about an hour or so later we crested the rim of the volcano. From there we followed a rocky, uneven path down into the crater. We caught our first glances of the sulphur miners, who were already hauling 80kg buckets of sulphur chunks up out of the crater. Tobin tried to snap a photo of one and the clearly frustrated miner immediately asked for money. Tobin, who has had difficulty withdrawing cash here, was able to offer him a measly 2000 rupiah, or about 20 cents. The miner was unimpressed, to say the least.

A trail of flashlights descending into the crater, with sulphur plumes on the right.

A little further down we reached the billowing sulphur vents and gazed at the blue flames licking up from the rocks. We’d all put on our gas masks ages ago when our eyes had started stinging and our breathing became choked by the fumes – but the miners entered the thickest parts of the plumes without any protection, coming out coughing and hacking with each new chunk of sulphur.

Tourists gather around the blue flames and sulphur vents.

It was humbling to say the least. To feel in this complete place of privilege, taking photos of people doing an incredibly dangerous job in order to make about $12 a day. The same price I’d tried so hard to bargain for our bus fare just half a day earlier. It just sat in the pit of our stomachs, this guilt for being tourists. I can only hope that I’m able to contribute something positive by being in this country, by working with communities and doing some small part to help ensure that their fisheries are sustainable and that ocean resources are well managed. But maybe I’m only telling myself that so I feel a little less helpless. I’m still sitting with this.

Endless streams of visitors taking in the grandeur of Kawah Ijen.

Posing with our guide (between Tobin and I), who is a former sulphur miner.

Sunrise was beautiful; the hike down was misty and lovely. Our guilt eased – slightly – once we were out of the crater. We stopped at a stunning waterfall that was only 200m away from the road on the drive back, which we (amazingly) had to ourselves. Tobin and I even ventured a bit further upstream through the jungle to reach another waterfall, tall and just gushing with water.

Feeling refreshed, we hopped back in the cars and returned to the turtle house for breakfast. Our guide told us that there was a festival that day, and since we all had a couple of hours before we had to start heading back to our respective cities, we went into town to check it out. It turns out the festival was quite big and it centred around a performance of 1000 dancers on the beach. There were a ton of people there but we were the only foreigners – we stuck out like sore thumbs and were constantly being asked to take photos with locals. We hung around for a couple of hours but unfortunately had to leave before the actual spectacle began.

Who's more interesting - the tall foreigners or local dancers?

Just a few of the thousand dancers before their performance.

Our return trip to Bali was just as interesting as the journey over – first, we took a local bus/taxi to the ferry terminal; bought tickets for the ferry; then were accosted by students learning English who asked us questions from their “Hunting Tourists” questionnaire including: what we liked the most about Indonesia, how long we are staying, what we do for work, etc. Next we enjoyed the pleasant ferry ride to Bali; then spent an hour trying to get a nice bus to Denpasar which proved fruitless as we watched bus after bus pass us by (either full, or for a specific tour company, or no tourists allowed). All we wanted to do was sleep, and we knew there was no hope of that on the local chicken bus, so in the end we splurged on a car ride that took us straight to my place. It was a long ride through torrential rain, but we slept almost the entire way and emerged groggy eyed at about 11:30pm.

Students on a mission to practice their English by "Hunting Tourists"

I made a friend while we waited for a ride!

Sleep felt absolutely glorious, but it was interrupted all too early the next morning when I had to wake up for my 8am flight to Ambon, Maluku… stories of those adventures in my next post!