Malang
After a four-hour delay, our plane landed in Surabaya, the second-biggest city in Indonesia. From there we caught a two-hour bus to the charming Dutch colonial town of Malang.
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Our first stop in the city was the bird market where
Julia found this cute sugar glider flying squirrel she
immediately wanted to take home. |
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a beautiful city with parks and a big mosque in the
center of town |
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In the middle you can see how people get
their motorbikes up and down this
steep alleyway. |
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All the men gathering at the mosque for Friday prayers.
The street was closed off for parking. |
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In the wartime museum, they had a big IBM
cardpunch computer. |
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| A whole store filled with cassette tapes! Yes it is 2013. |
Mount Bromo
Where on Earth can tourists look into an active volcano? Here on the island of Java, far on the eastern side is a area unlike any we have ever seen. There is a big caldera with 3 small peaks on it, the shortest one of which is letting off steam. That's Mount Bromo. In the background is the highest mountain on the island, Mount Semeru, that also is a smoking volcano.
We got up at 1 AM to drive over and watch the sunrise from above the caldera. We sat in the back of a jeep bouncing around for a few hours in the darkness. Our "tour guide" spoke little English and had only been to Bromo once before. After the sunrise from above, we drove down into the volcanic sand. We left the jeep and hiked up to the rim of Mt. Bromo to look inside of the steaming crater. Then we drove around the caldera through the "Sea of Sand" and the "Savannah".
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| We caught glimpses through the fog every once in a while at first. |
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| It was actually cold up there. |
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| As the fog cleared, we saw the whole scene. |
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We went down to the bottom of Bromo and took a horse
to the base of it. |
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| A short flight of stairs leads to the rim. |
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| looking down into the mouth of the beast |
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| just happy to be here |
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| One part of the caldera is a giant savannah, beautiful fields covered in grass and little purple flowers. |
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| our crew: the driver, "tour guide," and us |
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| some really creative hill farming of cold-weather vegetables |
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| a short way away was Rainbow Falls |
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