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| the lake of ijen volcano |
Kawah Ijen, Eastern Java, Indonesia Author: Stuart Wilson The Walk: Length: 8km Time: 4-10 hrs Starting Point: Paltuding Kawah Ijen End Point: (made up of hardened lava) that sits at its highest point at 2799m which is just short of 10,000ft. It last erupted in 2002 and has remained active ever since continually spewing out sulphur at one edge of the crater. This sulphur is mined by local folk who carry up to 90kg of the stuff up ridiculously steep and dangerous paths over a route of about 2 miles and get paid just $13 per day if they make two journeys. It is immensely difficult work and the miners are often poorly equipped against the fumes and elements with most suffering respiratory problems at some point and with just about all the long term workers expiring far before their years. Being a stratovolcano, Kawah Ijen is the perfectly clichéd volcano shape, it is exactly as though a child has hand drawn their vision, and save for the obligatory red explosion with scribbles of yellow and orange, Kawah Ijen really does look like the perfect volcano. But what draws people to the immense cone is not the shape (though it does look stunning set to a backdrop of golden sunset) nor the height which peeks high enough to see as far as Bali, but for the crater.
Sulphure miner
The mining when taking up sulfur the weight is 75kg
The volcanoes straddling East Java, Indonesia - A view as good as it gets? Sulphur miner atop Kawah Ijen maing a living in the hardest possible conditions At its crater Kawah Ijen has a 1 kilometre wide lake filled with sulphuric acid (and the greatest acidic lake on earth) which glows brightly turquoise and is flanked by Gunung Merapi in the imminent distance. All things considered it is mooted as being one of the most beautiful volcanoes in the world offering up views which literally entice visitors from every corner of the globe. But there is good news for those concerned about wading through tourists whilst trying to catch a slice of natural beauty – And that is Gunung Bromo. Mt Bromo is another volcano just down the road (well, just across the plateau) and it is insanely easy to reach with horses plying the route and 4x4’s making most of the trip. With that in mind, the masses of tourists head to Bromo and very few actually make the effort to reach Kawah Ijen bypassing it for the flatter and warmer shores of Bali and beyond the Nusa Tenggara. People generally make the ascent of Kawah Ijen during the daylight hours, but for those willing to make the ascent in darkness a rare phenomenon awaits them known as blue fire. (More later) and they also get to witness the sunrise and so of course, this was what we needed to do.
The climb through darkness was steepThe route ahead? Knowing it would be absolute darkness, freezing cold, desolate and sulphuric smoke would fill the landscape we bought a torch, face masks and packed our warm clothes and threw our boots on. Balancing getting onto the summit in time to see the blue fire and witness the sunrise, against getting to the summit too early and then sitting in the freezing cold for hours took some planning, and an element of luck and technology. Kawah Ijen can be reached from either Bondowoso or Banyuwangi with most people claiming Bondowoso being the most convenient, however – We were in Bali and so with Banyuwangi being the port of East Java it was where we began our quest. We left Bali at 6.30pm and arriving into Banyuwangi in Java for 11.30pm, but due to time differences it was at 10.30pm. And, everywhere was closed. Pitch black and nothing opened I spent ages finding someone that could help with transport. Eventually I saw some bloke selling tea from a porch and I asked him if he could help us find transport. He knocked up his father who said he might be able to help, he jumped on his scooter and shot off into the dark returning ten minutes later with a driver and a price of 600,000 IDR. He asked if I minded whether he brought his 7 year old son with us and of course I did not mind, I encourage such things. Reports on the web say the road from Banyuwangi to Kawah Ijen is in state of disrepair and passable only by jeeps. It is not, we did it in a Toyota minivan and arrived about 90 minutes later in darkness, cold and at the foot of the volcano (Paltuding Kawah Ijen) under a stunning starry night sky scarcely illuminated by a half moon.
The dried lava was dangerous in the dark A golden flicker of sunrise Guides surrounded us, but once I pulled out my torch and face masks and I think they knew we knew what we were doing. I thought we were the only foreigners there, but a couple of girls and a guy came over and asked if a guide was compulsory. I told them it was not and they asked if they could walk with us as they were a bit out of their comfort zone. The guy who we had arranged our driver with was called Edi, and his son was called Yusuf, Edi asked if he minded if he and Yusuf accompanied us and so we all set off at about 1.30am in absolute darkness up to an opening in the trees which was barely noticeable. Despite guide books and web reports claiming you must pay entrance we were not charged going up, or coming back down. The way I dealt with the situation about not arriving too late or too early was to use an app called Endomondo on my phone. It is a GPS based route tracker telling you how far/fast you have travelled, I knew the route was about 3km straight uphill and so this meant I could pace accordingly as well as having water stops/rest stops at sufficient intervals. The route begins slightly steep, and after about 15 minutes becomes very steep, so steep in fact that coming back down was a comedy of falls and slips with Jack (my son) falling some fifteen or so times. The route follows a well-trodden volcanic pathway which twists and turns up for about 2.5km to a rest house (which I think is a sugar refinery) We were walking only by our own torch and there were times we had to take serious precautions as the pathway splits and drops and is at times littered with bare tree roots. It was fun for the kids though, a real adventure in the darkness led by a single white strobe of light. But there was a real element of danger as roots randomly popped up here and there and the path simply falls away into huge ankle breaking holes.
Kawah Ijen, Eastern Java, Indonesia Author: Stuart Wilson The Walk: Length: 8km Time: 4-10 hrs Starting Point: Paltuding Kawah Ijen End Point: (made up of hardened lava) that sits at its highest point at 2799m which is just short of 10,000ft. It last erupted in 2002 and has remained active ever since continually spewing out sulphur at one edge of the crater. This sulphur is mined by local folk who carry up to 90kg of the stuff up ridiculously steep and dangerous paths over a route of about 2 miles and get paid just $13 per day if they make two journeys. It is immensely difficult work and the miners are often poorly equipped against the fumes and elements with most suffering respiratory problems at some point and with just about all the long term workers expiring far before their years. Being a stratovolcano, Kawah Ijen is the perfectly clichéd volcano shape, it is exactly as though a child has hand drawn their vision, and save for the obligatory red explosion with scribbles of yellow and orange, Kawah Ijen really does look like the perfect volcano. But what draws people to the immense cone is not the shape (though it does look stunning set to a backdrop of golden sunset) nor the height which peeks high enough to see as far as Bali, but for the crater.
Sulphure miner
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The mining when taking up sulfur the weight is 75kg
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The volcanoes straddling East Java, Indonesia - A view as good as it gets? Sulphur miner atop Kawah Ijen maing a living in the hardest possible conditions At its crater Kawah Ijen has a 1 kilometre wide lake filled with sulphuric acid (and the greatest acidic lake on earth) which glows brightly turquoise and is flanked by Gunung Merapi in the imminent distance. All things considered it is mooted as being one of the most beautiful volcanoes in the world offering up views which literally entice visitors from every corner of the globe. But there is good news for those concerned about wading through tourists whilst trying to catch a slice of natural beauty – And that is Gunung Bromo. Mt Bromo is another volcano just down the road (well, just across the plateau) and it is insanely easy to reach with horses plying the route and 4x4’s making most of the trip. With that in mind, the masses of tourists head to Bromo and very few actually make the effort to reach Kawah Ijen bypassing it for the flatter and warmer shores of Bali and beyond the Nusa Tenggara. People generally make the ascent of Kawah Ijen during the daylight hours, but for those willing to make the ascent in darkness a rare phenomenon awaits them known as blue fire. (More later) and they also get to witness the sunrise and so of course, this was what we needed to do.
The climb through darkness was steepThe route ahead? Knowing it would be absolute darkness, freezing cold, desolate and sulphuric smoke would fill the landscape we bought a torch, face masks and packed our warm clothes and threw our boots on. Balancing getting onto the summit in time to see the blue fire and witness the sunrise, against getting to the summit too early and then sitting in the freezing cold for hours took some planning, and an element of luck and technology. Kawah Ijen can be reached from either Bondowoso or Banyuwangi with most people claiming Bondowoso being the most convenient, however – We were in Bali and so with Banyuwangi being the port of East Java it was where we began our quest. We left Bali at 6.30pm and arriving into Banyuwangi in Java for 11.30pm, but due to time differences it was at 10.30pm. And, everywhere was closed. Pitch black and nothing opened I spent ages finding someone that could help with transport. Eventually I saw some bloke selling tea from a porch and I asked him if he could help us find transport. He knocked up his father who said he might be able to help, he jumped on his scooter and shot off into the dark returning ten minutes later with a driver and a price of 600,000 IDR. He asked if I minded whether he brought his 7 year old son with us and of course I did not mind, I encourage such things. Reports on the web say the road from Banyuwangi to Kawah Ijen is in state of disrepair and passable only by jeeps. It is not, we did it in a Toyota minivan and arrived about 90 minutes later in darkness, cold and at the foot of the volcano (Paltuding Kawah Ijen) under a stunning starry night sky scarcely illuminated by a half moon.
The dried lava was dangerous in the dark A golden flicker of sunrise Guides surrounded us, but once I pulled out my torch and face masks and I think they knew we knew what we were doing. I thought we were the only foreigners there, but a couple of girls and a guy came over and asked if a guide was compulsory. I told them it was not and they asked if they could walk with us as they were a bit out of their comfort zone. The guy who we had arranged our driver with was called Edi, and his son was called Yusuf, Edi asked if he minded if he and Yusuf accompanied us and so we all set off at about 1.30am in absolute darkness up to an opening in the trees which was barely noticeable. Despite guide books and web reports claiming you must pay entrance we were not charged going up, or coming back down. The way I dealt with the situation about not arriving too late or too early was to use an app called Endomondo on my phone. It is a GPS based route tracker telling you how far/fast you have travelled, I knew the route was about 3km straight uphill and so this meant I could pace accordingly as well as having water stops/rest stops at sufficient intervals. The route begins slightly steep, and after about 15 minutes becomes very steep, so steep in fact that coming back down was a comedy of falls and slips with Jack (my son) falling some fifteen or so times. The route follows a well-trodden volcanic pathway which twists and turns up for about 2.5km to a rest house (which I think is a sugar refinery) We were walking only by our own torch and there were times we had to take serious precautions as the pathway splits and drops and is at times littered with bare tree roots. It was fun for the kids though, a real adventure in the darkness led by a single white strobe of light. But there was a real element of danger as roots randomly popped up here and there and the path simply falls away into huge ankle breaking holes.