Day 149: Yogyakarta

Of course we slept through our 2am alarm. The driver banging on our door, "Wake up, we go Bromo, we leave you!" We sprung out of bed faster than that guy in The Night Before Christmas did to "see what was the matter," grabbed our bags and headed off. I got to get a little more sleep on the drive up to the volcano. Once we got there, we had to get in these old Toyota Land Cruisers. These things are so cool, they are the really old ones with the Jeep style body, and they are in close to perfect condition. After a seemingly endless bumpy ride, we arrived at the view point for Bromo. Man was that place crowded; people lined the railing and photographers had their tripods already set up hours in advance, claiming their territory for the perfect picture. We found a spot a little bit lower than the rest and awaited for this supposedly amazing view.

All I can say is WOW! The bright orange sun gradually came up, spitting out an amazing array of colors onto the volcanoes before us. Again, WOW! I couldn't stop taking photos, it was the most beautiful thing I have seen thus far, hands down, such a varying array of landscapes. A town spread amongst the edge of the crater of the plateau with the Bromo and Penanjakan volcanoes inside and the massive Semaru off in the background. 

After about an hour of watching the sun come up and snapping God knows how many photos, we headed back to our Land Cruiser to go for a ride to the plateau where we get to make the hike to the Bromo volcano, which is still active.

(These guys followed us to our parking spot, trying to get us to ride a horse up to Bromo)

Of course, the area was flooded with tourists, but I was able to blur them out with the amazing view before me. 

Getting to the top of Bromo was amazing, not only is this the second volcano I have seen but this is the first time I have been able to stare into the belly of the beast! (Remember, Kawah Ijen was a lake)

Heaps of smoke kept me from getting a good view in the crater, regardless, it was amazing, even if it was for only a couple seconds!

We spent some time staring at this natural wonder and then made our way back to the Land Cruiser. 

From the Land Cruiser, we transferred back to our van and made our way back to our hotel. I quickly changed out of my nasty clothes and gave myself a bucket shower, washing away two days of filth.

Before we knew it, our next driver was here to take us to Yogyakarta at 11:30am. We picked up two other tourists and then 5 Indonesian people. We were promised a van that seats 9 with only 6 passengers; not a good start. The drive was awful. We were also promised an 8 hour drive, we were already 5 hours in and even close to halfway there. We stopped to drop off all the Indonesians at random locations and continued to pick up more. What the hell is goin on? I asked the guy why we were picking up more people, of course, now his knowledge of English that he had yesterday on the phone was out the window. We arrived in Yogyakarta at 1:30am. Gotta love Indonesian transportation! We walked around, scouring the back alleyways for a good cheap hotel.  Luckily, Yogyakarta is a huge tourist area, so one was not hard to find. I was catching Zzz's before we could even get the door open.