In Indonesia

Next I will tell you something about our trip in Indonesia. This i a long story to share...
Our plan was to fly to Surabaya and from there continue to Mont Bromo and next day continue to Ijen volcano montain and for end come back to Surabaya and stay there last day. In the mountains we wanted to see the sunrise and blue fire.. So that's why we hiked at the night..

Here is the map, so you can see where we were and where we went..

Well we left on Friday morning and we took flight to Surabaya. When we finally got to the Surabaya's airport we decided to eat something before we keep going.. I took some chicken burger with french fries and lemonade. I though long time should I take Coca-Cola or Fanta. Finally I decided to took Fanta and the colour was blue.. Ilenia also took other Fanta and the colour was pink.. Taste was little bit weird It wasn't my thing :D

Blue and pink Fanta

Yeah but this was just beginning of this trip. Next some nice local woman came talk to us. Her name was Erica. She asked what were our plans and do we want to join with her, her friend and some other guy. They had one big car and also they were going to Ijen. And of course we have to pay about part of costs.. They told us that we can't go to Mont Bromo because it is close cause it was active.. We had one hour to decide what to do... So we went to these unknown journey.. Actually it was our the best decision on this trip.

Here was our team.  Erica, Ilenia, me, Essi, Vincent and Devi

Car trip was long.. It took like 5 hours. I didn't watch the time so much. We went to eat about in. halfway this car trip..It was so nice to go to eat with local people because it was so much easier to decided what to eat because they told us what we should eat and so on.. Food was great! 

When the car trip was over, we went to Erica's place which located in Bondowoso. There, we got rest a while before we left to drive to the Ijen. Trip to the mountain stand about three hours. The road to get there was very steep and horrible... I was quite sure that our car will break up. Fortunately, I was wrong. We were on the mountain at about 12 at night. We had to wait 2.5 hours that we got in to the hiking area.. Well we slept in the car at that time.. 2.30 finally we were able to walk to the top. People said that it takes about two hours to get to the top.. But we hiked only about 50 minutes. The climb was very steep and we had only one lamp with us. So sometimes it was very difficult to see anything because there was pitch black.. When we got to the top we went down to the crater to see blue fire. The smoke in the crater was awful so we weren't there for long.. and also we wanted to see sunrise in the top so we hiked back to the top. It was worth it! The view was amazing!! In the crater was a lake which we saw from the top very well.. We came back to the car around 7 in the morning. When whole gang was together we left back to Bondowoso.

The Blue fire! All pictures were very bad because there was too dark.. 

Tired but happy!!

In Bondowoso we took shower in Erica's place and went to eat before we continued our journey.. So our plan was take to bus to Probolinggo and there will continue to Bromo by other bus. Well we had lot of problems to get bus to Probolinggo so at last Erika took us to another village where we got a right bus to Probolinggo. I'm so grateful to Erica for all the help she gave us. The trip to Bromo was so stressful... In Probolinggo we had again some problems to get ride to Bromo. There was a small bus which was going to Bromo. First we had to wait some time because they wanted to pick up more people.. The tour price is based on the number of passengers. In the end we decided to pay more because we didn't bother to wait any longer.. Our car driver told that he has some homestays and because we hadn't any place reserved for the next night we decided to take this car driver's place.. It wasn't special but there we got little rest before we left again to the mountain.. In this time we took a Jeep tour of the mountain.. We left at 3.30 to the mountain so we slept almost 6 hours..

Homestay where we slept

Little village below by Bromo

Hundreds of Jeeps was going to Bromo. We walked about half a kilometer to the lookout spot, after when the jeep had left us. We took a picture of our car's register to find the right car. There was  a cold and windy. People were dressed like Finnish people in winter.. There was a lot of people which is why it was difficult to find a good place to see sunrise.

After the sunrise we came back to the our car and then we left to the crater. Jeep left us below of crater so we walked there. The journey wasn't so long but the land upon which we walked was very soft and dusty so walking was tough.. At the end to crater was a long stairs which also had to climb up.. Also here the smoke was so strong that we couldn't be very long at top.. When we came back to down we took a horse drive to the Jeep.

We thought that the hardest part of this trip was here.. but we were wrong.. It's Sunday morning now.. Again we waited for a while that we got a bus to Probolinggo. The intention was to continue from there to Surabaya. It was like nightmare when we got to Probolinggo... So many local men tried to sell ride us to Surabaya... It was sooo annoying. The only thing what we wanted to know was when the next local bus go to Surabaya. There was lot of buses where was air conditioner, but they were also more expensive than the local buses.. It was almost impossible to get right information about schedules of buses. Each men tried to do everything possible to fool us. And they succeeded. In the end we took an air-conditioned bus which we paid almost half more than the locals... In terms of money, it wasn't much but it still annoyed.. So if you ever go to Probolinggo or even Indonesia, try to pretend that you know everything otherwise they are fooling you... We slept whole bus trip to Surabaya. Trip took about 2 hours.. In Surabaya we took a taxi to center to shopping mall because we didn't have hotel yet.. Taxi left us front of to mall and we went to eat to Mc Donald's. When we all got food, I tried to use internet with my phone because there was free Wi-Fi. Ilenia also started to find her phone.. Buuut she didn't find that. She searched all bags and pockets but it wasn't found. It was hopeless. You can imagine that feeling!! We were in shock.. Only place where the phone could have been was the taxi.. And we didn't know anything about that taxi where we came to the center. In the end, we decided that we will meet at the same place after four hours and Ilenia goes back to the bus station to look for her phones. We left with Essi to look for hotel to us. After four hours we came back to Mc Donald's and Ilenia already was there. She smiled!!! She had gotten her phone back! It was miracle! It was long and hopeless trip but it was worth it.. After all this mess we went to eat.. And we really ate!! (starter, entree and dessert)

It was heavenly

After food we left to our hotel. In hotel I washed my hair like three times because it was so dirty after whole this trip.. Monday was pretty easy day compared to other days.. We just shopping whole day before we left back to the airport..

Dessert after breakfast 

Going home after hard trip!

Little pit adventure for life! Surabaya isn't so nice place to go but the mountains were stunning!! The experience was different but awesome!