A 2AM Wake Up, Ash Storms, and an Unforgettable View

Well, I’d say the title says it all. However, my trip to the volcanoes of the T------- Caldera started with little to no expectations due to my continued inability to read ahead in the guidebook and my habit of simply trusting my esteemed travel companions to choose excellent places to visit. All I knew was that they were ‘cool’ and that they were volcanoes and that was more than enough for me. I wanted to go.

We arrived at Cemero Lawang, the village closest to the volcanoes, at about 10:30PM and, considering it gets dark here about 5:30, it was pitch black. We immediately crawled into our warm beds and under the thick covers to keep out the considerable chill (about 10 degrees Celsius). We wanted to climb one mountain in order to watch the sunrise, then hike to the most famous volcano, climb it and then call it a day. In order to get to the top of the first mountain by sunrise at 5:20, we needed to get up pretty darn early to get to the top. We thought we had about 7km of hard climb, so in our desire not to miss the sunrise, we kept pushing up our start until we had a 2AM wake up and a 2:30AM start time. Should be sufficient.

Sure enough, we were up and at ‘em after only three hours of sleep and in our eagerness (and desperate desire to keep warm in our thin fleeces and windbreakers- I mean, come on, we’re practically at the equator!!) we left around 2:20. Spoiler alert: the hike wasn’t 7km and over half of it was the fairly flat approach to the base of the mountain. The three hours of time we’d budgeted to get up the hill seemed a little silly when we stumbled across the lookout point only 55 minutes after setting off. Within 15 minutes, the sweat had dried and we were left to contemplate to a long couple hours with only body heat and humor to keep us warm.

But it was so worth it. Because we’d arrived during the previous night and hiked up before dawn, I had no concept of where I was or what I was going to see when the sun came up. I was surprised that the road up to the mountain seemed to be rather ashy, but the light form our headlamps only served to light our immediate path and nothing farther than 20 feet in any direction.

So when the sun finally began to come up, with blues and reds and oranges to set the heart aglow with wonder, it came up on a scene that my Floridian soul could hardly comprehend. The first thing to catch the red glow of the sunrise was a massive black cloud in the distance to the west. Soon the glow from the horizon illuminated first one, than two, three, and finally four towering volcanic peaks, all clustered together about 4km distant. One was visibly spewing ash high into the air, creating the black cloud that we’d seen first. By the time the sun actually peeked out from behind the mountain we were on, it fully revealed the fantastic scene. The mountain we were perched atop formed one side of a massive caldera. Farms stretched out below and mountains on all sides dropped suddenly into a very large, very circular lake formed by a massive volcanic eruption from hundreds of thousands of years ago. The lush green that edged this waterless lake only served as a contrast to the ashy desert in the caldera itself. And rising from the bottom of this flat desert were the volcanoes.

Once we’d recovered our senses, we hiked back down to the village and had our breakfast, and we started the next part of our trek that would lead us to the edge of the erupting volcano’s crater. This volcano, Mount Bromo, is perhaps Indonesia’s most famous, and just had a major eruption about three months ago, so it was still rather unsettled. We didn’t quite realize this from afar, but as we approached its base across the shifting and featureless desert base of the caldera, it became more and more menacing. The final 75 or so meters to the rim of the crater was supposed to be easily reached by 253 steps (according to the lonely planet guidebook). However, by the time we reached base of these steps, we realized that three months of eruptions and heavy ash fall had buried these steps under a thick layer of ash, making the extremely steep assent very difficult. After much exertion we made it to the top.

The massive amounts of ash spewing from a volcano’s bowels are rather more impressive from 10 yards away. We sat, gasping for sulfuric air, perched on the rim of the crater and just listened. Listened to the rushing of the ash going past, the rumblings of the boiling lava far below, and, rather surprisingly to Meredith losing her breakfast right next to us (this is actually quite hilarious, honestly, what a majestic and dignified place to get violently ill. She’d been sick for a day or so, but characteristically uncomplaining. There we were perched on the edge of a massive and ancient volcano, burying partially digested egg, rice, etc. in volcanic ash. The humor of the situation may be lost on you, my dear readers, but we have since laughed long and hard). Then the ash rain started. An unfortunate wind had blown a heavy rain of chunks of ash right back down on us, coating our clothes, hair, faces and cameras. Yet we couldn’t tear ourselves away from the surreal beauty, that is, until the ash building up on the insides of our sunglasses began to threaten our vision (sight being a rather important sense when a false step could send you to your immediate and, I imagine, rather painful death in the depths of an active volcano).

We beat a hasty retreat down the side of the cone, made our way through an inconvenient sandstorm across the 2km back to the edge of the caldera, made our way up the side and back to the homestay. Not even the breathtakingly cold showers could keep us from at least attempting to get the fine black dust off our skin and hair and by the time we were done, the bathroom floor was black with dirt. Even today, two days later, 300 miles away and on the beach in Bali, I’m still getting volcanic ash out of my ears.

But it’s a lovely reminder of the day I stood on the edge of the entrance to the underworld.