News

Probolinggo's volcano

The day started at 2 A.M which gave us just enough time to get to “King Kong view piont” in time for the sunrise. Now we heard that watching the sunrise over mount bromo was an incredible experience, but a cold one. To be completely honest we told ourself mehhh we are Canadien... a cold experience in Indonesia must be a joke to us. But that was without taking into account a few element. First we didn’t have our coats, only hoodies. Second we went to a waterfall the day before and gabby’s thirsty shoes were still wet. Also, we had a pretty long ride of bike to do (windy…) and last but not least, it’s been awhile since our body met something remotely resembling cold. With all of those element into account, I was cold and as always, Alexis was fine. That man is never cold, apparently it comes with growing up in Beauce… Anyway, doing motorbike in the middle of the night was pretty cool but it has a downside, you kind of see nothing…

Once you get close to the volcano, you get arrested at a city gate where you will be charge a “city fee” which is a made up thing for the town to charge tourist for the volcano. Don’t get fooled, to visit the volcano itself you have to pay again. The first “tax” is 20 000 rupiah per person which is around 2$. Once you have paid, you make your way up top the view point. Don’t worry you won’t get lost, not only does the locals (who are all awake in the middle of the night) are directing you, but there’s so many tourist truck passing by that you just need to follow them. Since I am still not the greatest copilot in history, we didn’t end up in King kong’s viewpoint but the place was less crowded. We just stop when we judged that we were high enough to see the volcano and there was not too many people. While you wait for the sun to rise, there’s an endless amount of vendor that will try to sell you, hats, coffee, breakfast and gloves.

Pro tips: if you don’t have gloves (like any normal person traveling in Indonesia) use socks to cover your hands not pretty but it works.

After 30 minutes, the sun was there I a got to say it was worth it. I am not an early bird (more like a noon bird), so I rarely see sunrise but I was glad I made the effort to see it.

Once the sun was up, all the tourists went back into their tucks and headed down to the volcano itself and so did we.

When we made our way down we crossed a entrance looking place but we didn’t stop. To be fair it looked more like a door than anything else and at that moment we already paid something when we entered the village, for us that was the fee. So as we were arriving in the “sea of sand”, yep it’s its real name, we got arrested by a guy requesting our ticket.

Let me explain a little bit, first the guy was coming from behind us so he probably followed us from the gate, second he didn’t spoke well in english. We proceed to show him the ticket we got at the village entrance. He explained to us that it was not the proper ticket for the volcano. We argued (I say we but It was Alexis) and after a while he just said to Alexis to get back up alone and we would have to buy only 1 ticket for both of us (340 000 ruppia). So I basically visited the volcano for free. Now I see you reading this and thinking, they just scammed the country! Indonesia is a poor country and needs this money to maintained their national ressource. The thing is... according to Indonesia’s laws, nobody's supposed to be charged when visiting a natural site. So the ticket itself was illegal… And once you see the site, you know the money doesn’t go to keep it in shape…

After having a bit of fun in the sand, we headed to the bottom of the volcano. We left our motorbike in the sort of parking at the beginning of the trail.

After that, we climbed. First we got through a sandy path and made our way to the stairs, with the horses and all of the other humans.

Once you get to the stair, you have to climb up the stair in a line. Be careful, they are full of sand and very slippery.

After the stairs, we were on the verge of the volcano, we walked on a 5 feet large edge around the hole of the volcano. I had a tiny voice in my head that kept screaming don’t trip and don’t slip. Both side were not really appealing to do a free fall.

After taking a impossible amount of picture we made our way back down the volcano. I think I still have sand in my shoes from that day.

We then went back to our hotel and proceed to fall asleep in less than 30 second.