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Kawah Ijen Aguas's photos around Kawah Ijen, Indonesia

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Entry from: Kawah Ijen, Indonesia
Entry Title: Kawah Ijen

Entry:

EN: We were picked up at our hotel by a minibus to take us to the travel agent office where we would get on the minivan for our trip, the guy from the agency also came to the hotel so we tried to discuss the slightly higher price we had paid him for the trip. He said we would talk at the office, but, of course, he never showed up, the little prick! So, based on our experience, we cannot really recomend Mahabarata Tour and Travel's services. The minivan finally showed up and we got on, travelling with us were 2 French couples, Aurelie and Boris were really nice and we ended up talking to them a lot throughout the trip, the other couple were a bit more reserved, we didn't even learned their names. The trip to Ijen took about 5 hours, the last bit was through a really bad road and on top it started pouring down, we also ran into some fog, which reminded us of our adventures in Flores. Our driver didn't speak any English so communication was not the best, according to him we where always 1 hour away from our destination. We stayed at a homestay in the middle of Kebun Balawan coffee plantation, near Sempol. There was a hot spring nearby where we were taken by our driver and the homestay manager, we had imagined some waterfall or something but it turned out to be a bit more sofisticated as there were a couple of hot pools there. It felt good to jump in after the trip, it was really nice although the water was a bit sulphur scented. Later we had dinner and a beer with our travel mates and went to bed early because we had to wake up at 3AM again the next morning in order to get an early start up Kawah Ijen. We left for Kawah Ijen after breakfast, at around 4AM, it was a 1 hour drive to Pos Paltuding, the starting point for the 3km trek up the crater. 3km doesn't sound like much, but this is no piece of cake, the path is quite steep most of the way up, and often slippery. On the way up we started meeting the sulphur collectors, some of them already coming back with a load of sulphur. The hike was not easy for us carrying just a small backpack, and here were these small guys, some of them pretty old, coming down carrying between 80 an 100kg of sulphur on their backs! Quite a humbling experience. Some of them stopped us asking for cigarettes (ended up giving away a whole pack), or asking for money in exchange for taking their picture, we ended up negotiating a picture for 4 cigarettes and a lighter. After about 2 hours we finally made our way up to the crater rim, and felt that our effort had been worthwhile, the view of the crater and the turquoise sulphur lake was just breathtaking. We could also see the smoking volcano vent, which is where the collectors gather sulphur. We walked around the rim for different views of the lake, before we started our way down into the crater and to the lake. The path from the rim down to the sulphur deposits and the lake is very steep and splippery, there is a lot of gravel and loose rocks, it is quite dangerous and one needs to take great care as a fall would very easily be fatal. The sulphur fumes coming from the volcano vent don't help to make the way down any easier either. Here we could trully appreciate the superhuman nature of the sulphur collectors, carrying more than their own body weight of sulphur up this treacherous path. As we were approaching the bottom of the crater, the smell of the sulphur fumes was almost unbearable, quite disgusting to be honest. We spent maybe only half an hour at the lake, and around the volcano vent, watching the supermen working in this terrible environment. It was pretty smoky there, but now and then the fumes were blown away by the wind and the view over the ...
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Photos from this trip:
1. On the road to Ijen plateau
2. Funny cloud on the road to Ijen plateau
3. -On the road to Ijen plateau
4. Climbing the Kawah Ijen - sulphur is heavy!
5. Climbing the Kawah Ijen
6. Climbing the Kawah Ijen - sulphur baskets
7. -Climbing the Kawah Ijen
8. Climbing the Kawah Ijen - tough job!
9. Sulphur scale
10. Climbing the Kawah Ijen - almost there?
11. Sulphur collector
12. Climbing the Kawah Ijen - are we there yet?
13. Climbing the Kawah Ijen - we are there!
14. Kawah Ijen crater rim
15. Kawah Ijen crater lake
16. -Kawah Ijen crater rim
17. -Kawah Ijen crater lake
18. Sulphur collector (4 cigs and 1 lighter pic)

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