Malang

At 12:15 a.m. I got a message from our driver saying he was outside. We stopped at one other hotel to pick up another couple. I was crushed to learn they were French and just as I feared, I could smell the guy the instant he got in the car. Luckily, he put on another layer and then it wasn’t a problem. We weren’t driving for long before we pulled over on the side of the road. We had to get out of the car and sit on some steps to wait for a different driver to pick us up. Other people were dropped off at the same location.

Eventually, some old land cruisers lined up along the curb and we were told to hop into one. The French guy was tall so he arranged for two Indonesian girls who were in the front of the vehicle when we got there to be moved to the back. It felt pushy and unfair at first because they clearly didn’t want to move and they were there first. I was jealous of him and his girlfriend for getting the front and simultaneously glad he took it because the back was CRAMPED. Instead of regular seats, there were two tiny benches facing each other. It would have been uncomfortable if I was back there by myself, with four people it was torture. I couldn’t move my body at all and the roof was too low for me to sit upright. I had to hunch my head the whole way there. Apparently, the national park has a rule that only old Land Cruisers are allowed inside. It sounds fake but if you go you’ll see only retro Land Cruiser! It was the worst car ride of my life and I prefer not to draw out the details. For me, the pain is still too near.

We drove onto a dirt road as we got closer and got thrown around as the fleet of Land Cruisers seemed to race each other to get there first. We made it back onto a paved road where we finally and blessedly parked and got out. It turned out to be moving from one torture to another as it was freezing outside. I had some thin layers on and long pants but it was still cold. I couldn’t find my wool buff and after thinking about it, I felt sure I had put the buff in my fanny pack. I realized I didn’t have my fanny pack and went all the way back down to the car to get it. My searching became more and more frantic. After searching for a while, I came to the conclusion it could not be in the car. So, it must either be in the first car or on the side of the road. My wallet, passport, and GoPro were in it. As you might imagine, I was freaking out trying to remember where I left it. I have a terrible memory so I was drawing a blank. I used Google Translate to tell the driver that I thought I had left it in the last car and asked him to please reach out to the other driver for me. I ran back up the hill to find Indi in one of the little shacks/cafes to tell her the news. 

We sat in the store for a while and each drank a small cup of hot milo. We moved to another store close to a lookout point. It was very cold, in the store it was warmer, but still cold. I was so desperate for extra insulation that I inflated my neck pillow and wore it around my neck. We had to wait quite a while but eventually light began to show on the horizon. We went outside to a lookout point and huddled for warmth. We stared at the horizon for a while before trying another spot. We realized that we had been looking at the wrong side and that the real view was on the other side.

A plane of fog covered the ground, sitting below the tops of multiple volcanoes. The sun rising over Bromo National Park was the most beautiful sunrise I have ever had the pleasure to witness. Gunung Batok is the dormant volcano with deep regular lines that run its length. The look is quite striking. A constant veil of steam billows from the closest crater – Mt. Bromo. The tallest volcano in the back would let out occasional circular puffs of steam. As time went on, there was enough light to launch the drone. I got some photos and videos but spent most of the battery on a timelapse. The battery was gone by the time it finished. That ended up being a bad idea because the timelapse didn’t turn out. The sun had just started to shine on the volcanoes, so I landed the drone and relaunched it with a fresh battery.

I got a few more shots and then I had to land because we were supposed to be back at the car at 6:00 am. On the way back I tried to poop but had no success. As I squatted, I looked at my phone and saw that the driver of the first car had found my fanny pack! I left the restroom feeling greatly relieved, just not in the way I had expected.