So last I left off I was planning to go down to Kuta and come back to Ubud, but the date to come back for the final visa visit was only two days later so I went to Sanur instead to just wait it out. Not much to say about Sanur, just an overpriced quieter beach resort area. Just poached a a nice resort's pool for a day cause there wasn't a lot to do, then made my way back and finally got my visa extended. I guess in hindsight I would have just paid the extra 80 dollars or so to have an agent do it for me. Visa in hand, it was finally time to make the trip to Java. There was a definite learning curve in taking public transport from 5 days ago when I first got to Java. while in Bali and Lombok, special tourist mini bus routes are set up making it very easy, while not overly comfortable, to get around. Public transportation on the other hand can be very hard, especially when people try to sell you fake tickets or jack up the price because your white or lie about how far the bus goes. from Bali, I got a ride on the back of a scooter to the bus station, and was worried about finding a bus to the right place. This was a mistake. The bus was not only full, and swelteringly hot, but I was the only white person on the bus and not one person spoke English. Also, the leg room was made for shorter Indonesians so I had to have my knees up at my chest. On top of the uncomfortable bus/ferry ride to Java I timed it horribly so I got to Banuwangi in the middle of the night. When I pointed to the hotel in the guidebook I was trying to go to, I was told to jump off the bus in the middle in the city full of anxiety. Luckily, a scooter rider who spoke broken English saw me on the side of the road and took the opportunity to make some money and drove me to basically the only hotel in town. I spent the night in by far the dirtiest (and cheapest) place of the trip and had to spray some cologne to cover up the smell. But I made it through the night and the next morning hired another scooter to take me to the bus station. The scooter driver was a guide to Ijen Plateau (really wish I could seen it, but there were not enough tourists for me to join a group) and spoke English so he gave me tips on taking buses like catching the bus outside the bus terminal and paying on board to avoid scammers and see how much others were paying. The next destination I was headed was only an hour north called Baluran National Park. Getting dropped off at the park entrance on the side of the road, I paid the entrance fee and hired a ranger to drive me on his motorcycle the 45 minutes on a dirt road to the Bekol outpost. Bekol was really cool, but I expected there to be more there. All it was was a ranger station, a lookout tower on a little hill to see wildlife, a little building with 5 rooms where you could stay, and a building where the park rangers and maintenance crew lived. Right now is the low tourist season because it is the wet season so of course I was the only visitor to the park and none spoke English. I also discovered through broken communication that you are supposed to bring your own food into the park, but luckily at the ranger station they had a little shelf of instant noodles and water for sale that had to make due with for a few days (just as my sickness wore off and I had my hunger back again for the first time in two weeks). Baluran was really cool though. It didn't have English speaking guides for hire like my guidebook said, so I had some anxiety waskign the 6 km trail by myself. Balurans landscape has savanna, grasslands, forest and jungle all within a small area. Wildlife in the park includes Timor deer, Water Buffalo, Benteng (wild cattle-like creatures), Jaguars, Wild dogs, the worlds longest Python, king cobras, boars, and a couple kinds of monkeys. While hiking I was able to see a lot of the Timor Deer, a few Bentang and monkeys that scared the life out of me some times. I also saw a bird like a peacock, but almost twice the size which was surprising. After two nights and a full day, I left back to the main road craving vegetables and meat. As I was leaving I ran into two Dutch guys, travelling the other way (first white people I'd seen in 3 days). The told me they had just come from Mt.Bromo that just started erupting two days before. I had seen lots of bromo on the news besue of seismic activity they closed the crater a few days before it actually started erupting, but the dutch guys said you could still climb the neighboring peak and it was a sight that you couldn't miss if you were passing by. so I decided to go check it out. Calling a bus down from the park entrance I made my way to Probolingo (sitting next to 12 chickens a couple of guys brought on) When I got to Probolingo station, usually a mini-bus takes you the hour up to Camero lewang which is the gateway to Bromo. Unfortunately, the mini buses don't leave until they are full and after two hours of waiting not one other person came to fill the 10 person bus to I had to hire a scooter driver to take me up. This was a ride I'll never forget. About 10 minutes in it started raining lightly and 5 minutes later it was a full on downpour so hard I had to put my sunglasses on to see. So there I was, rain jacket cinched up, riding up a steep mountain road on the back of a scooter, lightening ripping across the horizon, all in route to get to get to exploding volcano. I guess if I was looking for adventure, Java has been giving it to me. However, the rough trip up was definitely worth it. Mt.Bromo is a volcano that, along with two other cones, is located in the pit of a huge crater. Camero lewang on the edge of the big crater just outside the 3 km no entry zone the police and military put up. I stayed at a nice little chalet type guesthouse that also had a few Japanese and two french people staying in it, but for the most part was empty because the owner said all the tourists cancelled their stay when the media made a huge deal of the eruption, which happens from what I could understand every 5-30 years, so I was pretty lucky to witness it. I arranged transport to the neighboring peak and got up at 3 am along with a french, enmglsih and German couple to get to the viewpoint by sunrise. The van took us as high as it could then we hiked in the dark the 30 minutes up the steep path to the viewpoint, usually packed with tourists. The view from the top was amazing, one of the most surreal scenes I have ever seen. Mt.Bromo was puffing away ash and gas 1 km into the air. Normally there is a little steam coming from bromo, but it was really going now. After about 50 or so pictures we made our way back down, forced to skip the actual climbing of Bromo because of the no entry zone. Back at the guesthouse, I decided to take an extra night to just relax and enjoy the cool weather up in the mountains. After descending from bromo, I took the bus to Surarbaya, and the train to Yogayakarta (caled Jogja) where I am right now. The trains are by far the best way to travel and I am going to try to take them as much as possible to get around. Jogja is the first big city I have been to in Indonesia and am going to explore it and the area for the next few days. Its nice because there are a lot of educated people who speak English so I am enjoying the city so far. Will talk about it in the next post.
