We are rabid Baliphiles, and each time we go, we like to spend time exploring further afield in Indonesia. I had seen amazing images of Ijen Crater in East Java and was like, we’re going there! Not a fan of organised tours, my mission was to find a Bali tour company that would give us a private car/driver, pick up Legian, drive to Ijen Crater, where we would stay for a couple of nights at Jiwa Jawa Resort (OMG! You need to do this!), then onto Bromo for two nights, and finally a drop-off in Malang, where we would jump on a train to Yogyakarta. Too easy.
Long story short, after a bazillion emails, a bunch of quotes, and some serious product reviewing, we decided on Bromo Ijen Tour. We didn’t pay a deposit and sat waiting at our hotel reception in Legian, on the day of departure, fingers crossed that they would show up. Our driver did show up, and he slapped!
We drove west to Gilimanuk, caught the ferry to the Ketapang Ferry Port, and Jiwa Jawa Resort Ijen was about an hour’s drive away. Jiwa Jawa is a one-off kind of property, views to die for, a living art gallery with yep, calling it, the BEST breakfast buffet in the world! A convenient 50-minute drive to Ijen Crater, Jiwa Jawa is ensconced in a small village in the foothills of the Ijen Plateau, surrounded by mountains and lush plantations.
Ijen Crater is part of the Ijen volcano complex, and many visit it in the middle of the night, hiking the 2-hour, 4km trail under the stars, then descend 45 minutes, deep into the abyss, passing hard working sulphur miners, to see the blue flame – sulphur combusting on contact with air. But not us, nah uh. Those fumes are toxic, Ijen Crater is an active volcano, and we weren’t keen to test crater exit strategies in pitch black in the event of an eruption.
We left for the crater at a respectable hour, walking the trail in daylight, accompanied by our tour guide (it’s pretty hard to get lost, but he came with the price of our car/driver hire). The walk up was steep, requiring numerous pitstops (me) and half a packet of darts (our guide). You can hire trolley carts to take you up or down the mountain, and while super tempting, and perhaps a little bit embarrassing as the cart haulers were half my size, I just couldn’t cope with teenager side-eye.
The smell of a thousand monkey farts alerted us to the fact we had arrived. It was a spectacular vista. Ijen volcano is an acid lake, a brilliant turquoise colour, the result of various materials dissolved in the water, including hydrochloric and sulfuric acids (so no swimming in this lake peeps!) The landscape is moonscape-like, rocky, barren, stinky, and mesmerizingly ethereal. A white cloud of toxic fumes often covers the lake, a photo op you just can’t miss.
From Jiwa Jawa, we travelled to Bromo (that’s a story for another day), and then to Malang, to catch a train (which ended up being an absolute highlight of the trip), to Yogyakarta. Funny story. When we arrived at the Yogya train station, we couldn’t get a taxi to our hotel, so had to revert to rickshaws. The three of us each had a rickshaw with our backpacks, our drivers speaking rapid fire Bahasa to one another before shooting off in different directions.
The look of horror etched on the face of our then-18-year-old son as he watched his olds disappear into thick Java traffic makes me smile even today. He relayed later that thoughts of the white slave market whirled through his head, questions careering in his mind: Where do I go if I can’t find them? A big hotel? The Aussie Consulate? Maccas? (Nah, I made that one up.) It wasn’t one of our better parenting moments, but it’s a fun story to tell in the aftermath, right? Ijen Crater….GO!
