Trip to Ijen Crater

Last week, my office mate planned a trip to Ijen Crater. This trip was one of outstanding since I was in Malang. Last time I cancelled because the mount still in siaga/ waspada status. 

I imagined that the trip similar with Bromo mount, so I didn’t prepare that much. The day before we went, I just prepared the clothes and shoes, and of course some medicine and food for the trip.

From Surabaya, we went after Maghrib pray, about 6:30 PM. We consist of 8 person, separated in two cars, black panther and brio. My friend, mba Dinda & I joined with Nanda and his wife, Clara, in black panther. Mba Wina and her husband, Mr. Mufti joined with Mr. Danang and his wife, Mba Yuli in Brio. We stopped in some rest area, first, Rest Area in Surabaya Highway, second in Tongas Asri restaurant in Probolinggo, and rest area in Paiton.  At 12 PM we all merged in a car, black panther, and the brio parked in Nanda grandfather’s house in Bondowoso. After pass Sempolan, we met 4 security posts which in the first post we had to fill the guest book. We arrived in Ijen Crater 2:30 AM, a little bit delayed because of the thick mist we had to careful of during the trip. After parking, we bought the entry and park ticket, for entry ticket IDR 5000 /person, car park ticket IDR 5000/car. Before climbing, it’s recommended to wear masker, gloves, shoes, jacket, and water.

Information house

Buying ticket here

Ticket checking, starting point

According to the information board, the distance Ijen Crater from the car park is 3 km. I thought that 3 km was not that far. We started the climbing at 3 AM. The track was good, made of sand and little stone. The beginning of the track was flat, the slope not really big that we could pass it easily. Then the track was getting up. One of our member, Mba Wina felt exhausted. She hardly breathe and felt so tired after walked not more than 10 steps. She vomited once. I felt that too, I couldn’t vomit, I thought I could die there :( I regret that I didn’t prepare with exercises before. 

We arrived the canteen about 4:30 AM. It’s about 2 km from the start. Mba Wina took a rest before continued the track. I ate my chocolate bar and drink some water to fill my energy. Some ate pop mie and drank hot tea or coffee. We continued the track and saw the sunrise during the climbing. In other word, we failed to see the Blue Fire, hahaha.

Forest after fire

Less vegetation heading to the crater

We could see the beautiful scenery after sunrise. We could see the forest after fire. We could see the other mounts surrounding the Ijen Crater. 

Finally, we arrived in Ijen Crater at 6 AM. Yesss!!!! Need 3 hours for climbing, oh my dear, hahaha

Ijen Crater

Sulphur miner

Our best photo

Unfortunately, the mist and sulphur fumes sometime appeared so we couldn’t take the best photo :( We sat on the edge with the other climbers. We could see some sulphur miners carry the sulphur stones on the bucket on the shoulder. We decided to went down at 7 AM because the mist getting thicker and the sulphur fumes getting much that made my eyes watery. I was kinda optimist person to think that went down much easier that went up. Oh, man, I was wrong, hahaha. My knees, oh my knees. You wanted to stop but it was really hard to stop getting down. I slipped once :(

Took a rest while going down

Mba Wina's birthday

Finish point

Our motivations to go faster are the toilet and our breakfast menu, Indomie goreng + egg, hahaha. We reached the kitchen to get our favourite menu at 8:30 AM. With hot tea, it heavenly tasted, really :D

We headed to Catimor Homestay to cleaned up our body and got some rest. Catimor Homestay located in Kebun Blawan – PTP Nusantara XII, Jalan Pemandian Air Panas, Kalianyar, Sempol Kabupaten Bondowoso. Here some information about Catimor Homestay :

Office : 085231577847 (on the bill, there are some numbers : 081336462878, 085231577847)

Titik S : 085233297453 / Indah S : 0852332628342

Email : blawan@ptpn12.com

The homestay were old building in coffee plantation, surrounding the employee’s housing. There was Wifi spot in the homestay (thanks God, because there’s no any signal, but Telkomsel, but it’s weak signal too). After checked in, we went to hot spring bathing place, pemandian air panas in bahasa near the homestay. It helped us to release some pain during climbing, hahaha. The entry ticket only IDR 2000 / person. You can order food and drink too. There were 3 small pools and some separated rooms to bath with hot water. At 1 PM we got back to the homestay, had lunch then slept. Around 4 PM we checked out and paid the bill. Normally, we had to pay IDR 300.000/night/room (room capacity 3-4 people, we ordered 2 rooms). It was cheap, wasn’t it? :) Even we got some food (bread and boiled egg) from the homestay. 

We reached Bondowoso 6:30 PM. Nanda’s grandmother and grandfather were so nice to us. They even prepared dinner and room, they thought that we would stay a night there. We had dinner, enjoyed delicious food, yummy, then took the Brio and went home. I arrived my home at 00:30 AM.