I stayed two nights here, so I’d have another chance to see the volcano. I woke up at 4:30AM today and walked straight to the Mt. Bromo volcano. My room is up on the upper edge of an ancient caldera. So I walked on a road down to the bottom of the caldera first. This morning the bottom was filled with fog. I had to walk across a flat sea of volcanic ash for about 2km and there was fog all around me. There were some footprints and some stones on the ground to follow, otherwise it would be easy to get lost. Plus I made this walk yesterday which made things a lot easier.
Things were much clearer today. I could see the inside of the volcano where the gas was venting out. Yesterday it was all a gassy mist inside the crater. The sunrise was nice again. The landscape always looks different because the clouds are always moving through the caldera. Again today I got some fantastic views.
I went back to my hotel and had breakfast and then got on the bus back down the mountain. It was slow going, waiting around and stopping to pick up passengers for about an hour. I was worrying since I already paid for an onward bus that leaves at 12:00 and I hope I wouldn’t miss it. I almost did. I got to the travel agency around 11:10 (the ticket receipt said be there at 11:30) and the bus was already there and it left just a few minutes later! I was kind of shocked at why the bus was there so early and what if I arrived only a few minutes later?
I was relieved I got on the nice express bus to the city of Denpasar on the island of Bali. So far I’ve been on the island of Java. The bus took me along the northeast coast of Java. There was ocean on the left and mountains on the right. We stopped for lunch and I quickly found out everyone else on the bus was eating expect me because they had a coupon for lunch. The travel agent must have forgot to give me to me! So I had to pay extra for the lunch even though I was on the same bus as everyone else.
Later the bus drove onto a ferry to the island of Bali. I noticed at one point the lady next to me was grabbing a mouse or rat off the floor of the bus. It must have been her pet. I finally arrived at the bus station after 9:00 at night. All the public buses stopped running but I found a couple people to share a taxi with. The taxi went to Kuta beach and I found a cheap room to stay in for the night.