May 3rd, 2019.
We’re going to Mount Bromo
It’s time to leave Surabaya, a town that we ended up liking a lot. We are going to Mount Bromo! At 9 am our train departs from Surabaya heading to Probolinggo, and there seems to be no other tourists around!
As we arrived to the train station we asked about the platform of our train and someone told us to wait sitting. A while after, a man comes and takes us to the train, VIP style, while everybody else had been waiting on the platform for a while. We assumed they realized we would have been lost without their help, haha. At 11 we arrived in Probolinggo, where we were to take a bus to Mount Bromo.
Arriving in Probolinggo
How to go from Probolinggo to Mount Bromo
Asking around, we found the bus stop where we could take a short local bus ride to the bus terminal. The so called “bus” was more like a tuk tuk that is never considered to be full (10k rupiah per person). Once at the bus terminal, the driver knows where to drop us off; since we are obviously tourists, he knows we’re looking for a bus to go to Mount Bromo so he pointed to another so called “bus”.
Local bus in Probolinggo
This one was a bit bigger, supposed to fit up to 15 people but 9 already seemed like too many people to share such space, even though they put all our backpacks (and a local person) on the roof.
This “buses” head from Probolinggo bus terminal to Mount Bromo a few times a day. Basically, they go when they are full. Or when they are half full if you pay them a little more (60k rupiah per person). We tried getting a grab ride though, but no one would take us and later we understood the reason was the horrible uphill road…. A full guide about visiting Mount Bromo is also available on this post.
Cemara Lawang, the village by Mount Bromo
After the bumpy ride we arrived in Cemara Lawang, the village by Mount Bromo. Accommodation there wasn’t great… we found a room for 200k and it was probably the worst room we’ve had during all our months of travel. We would’ve liked to stay two nights, but we decided to stay just one in the end, and booked the bus back with the same driver thinking that would be cheaper. Later we found out that our driver was a bit of an a**whole and overcharged us, but oh well, we can’t always win!
In Cemara Lawang there’s only two restaurants. We went for lunch to a little one that had local dishes for 1€ (15k rupiah) and met there some of the people that came in the same bus. Lunch was delicious! Our new friends had planned on going up the mount. Quickly, we went to change our clothes to join them. Don’t forget that even though there is an entrance fee, there are ways to get around it as we explained on this post.
Going up Mount Batok
The crater of Mount Bromo is now a days closed due to its activity. We climbed the mountain next to it, Mount Batok. It was not an easy path. Maybe it wasn’t even a path… but it was a fun climb up (and a slippery way down!). We reached the top just before sunset, and it was worth every drop of sweat. The views over Bromo were breath taking, the smoke blowing up, the sun setting….
Hiking up to Mount Batok
We took our time to enjoy having the place for ourselves just before many other people started to arrive. And we were just in time, because it was starting to get dark… so we headed down as quick as we could safely walk and slide. By the time we were at the bottom, it was completely dark. At least, the last part was only flat and sand.
And then, we looked up and saw a sky full of bright starts and the milky way. What an amazing way to end a day!
We go to sleep early, because the next day we want to wake up at 4am to see the sunraise over Mount Bromo. Read it here!
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