Today we are headed for Cemora Lawang via Probolinggo to see one of Java’s most spectacular volcanoes, Gurung Bromo.
The train to Probolinggo leaves Letapang at 9am, so we have ordered a taxi for 7.30am to ensure we have plenty of time and the best chance of securing seats in either executive or bisnis class and thereby avoiding economy which apparently is a bit of a free-for-all. What we hadn’t appreciated is that Java is in a different time zone to
Bali and yesterday we had gained an hour. It’s actually 6.30 am when we present ourselves in reception anticipating that our pre-booked taxi will be waiting. There’s no point in hanging around in the hotel so we leave anyway and just as well we did, as all the executive class tickets are sold out by the time we get to the station. We settle for bisnis class (no aircon) and reconcile ourselves to atwo-hour wait for the train. This is not a busy station, at least at this time in the morning g; there is only one other train leaving before ours. The journey is long and the train is crowded and inordinately slow. If this is bisnis class then economy is definitely to be avoided! At every station, and there are many, hawkers selling all manner of food stuffs parade their wares through the carriages and from time to time the train staff proffer plated meals of nasi goreng.
We arrive in Probolinggo at 2pm. The journey has taken five hours. The only transport from the station appears to be becaks (bicycle rickshaws) who seem to know how to get us to Cemoro Lewang . So we hire two (one not being big enough for the both of us and our luggage) and we are off through the quiet and pretty backstreets of Probolinggo to eventually be delivered to … the tourist information office. Opting for the easy life we allow ourselves to be persuaded to sign up for a package which includes the transfer from Probolinggo to Cemora Lewang 45 kilometres away, a sunrise trip to the volcano Gunang Bromo and a tourist shuttle to the town of Solo, our onward destination in central Java. All of which sounds a lot more appealing than trying to organise it ourselves. The transfer to Cemora Lewang is a rather shabby and cramped minibus up some of the steepest roads I’ve ever encountered. Up and up we climb, passing impossibly-steep cultivated fields, through the clouds to emerge at the Cemara Indah Hotel right on the lip of the massive Tengger crater, some 2000 or so meters above sea level.
And the view is spectacular in an eerie, surreal kind of way. Stretching below us is the enormous crater floor 10km across on which three volcanoes seem to rest on an ashen sea of volcanic sand. The whole scene has the unreality of a computer generated film set. The scene is dominated by a large perfectly symmetrical conical volcano and it adjacent neighbor, the grey Gurung Bromo spread in an untidy fashion across the crater floor. By no means the largest volcano in Java at 2,392 meters, Gurung Bromo must be one of the most dramatic as it belches clouds of sulphurous steam into air. The setting is made all the more dreamlike by what looks like a miniature model temple so dwarfed is it by the imposing surroundings.