Magnificent Bromo Mountain

At end of April 2010, we had an Asia Pacific conference, for leisure Bromo was the destination for the foreigners to enjoy beautiful scenery in East Java, Indonesia. The trip from Surabaya to Bromo took quite a long time, about 6 hours, there were 3 buses full of the team. Around 22:00 o'clock finally we reached the hotel in quite cold weather. It's too late, so no many option in the hotel for dinner, just fried rice and fried noodle. We didn't have much time to rest, to see the sunrise we should wake up very early, at 03:00 o'clock in the morning, we would take jeeps from the hotel to Pananjakan. Although there was no aircon, inside room was very cold.


A queue of jeeps with the driver was ready in front of the hotel, there were 4 passengers in a car. It's so dark, but the driver was expert enough to drive on the sandy road and avoid the hole. Because it's dark, we could not see the environment at all, around 45 minutes in the bumpy car, we reached Pananjakan. We had to climb to the top, it took around 20 minutes walking distance, but the road was reclining and it's very cold, until I had to stop to take a long breath and recharged my energy :-)


At the top we're waiting for the sunrise, it's still dark, there were some benches to sit without any roof. Unfortunately it's so cloudy at that time, when the sun was rising, it only showed orange color on the sky, we could not see the sun. It's so windy and cold, the committee brought us some hot drinks such as coffee, milo and tea that could warm our body. If the weather was nice, you could see a beautiful scenery of Bromo and Batok mountains with the sun as the background.

We continued the journey by jeep again to go to Bromo. We started feeling hungry, lucky that there were fruit in the car, so we could feel our stomach with either banana, apple or orange. We stopped by at the slope that we could take pictures of beautiful Batok mountain. The dissatisfaction of imperfect sunrise was healed here. No cloudy weather anymore.

The jeep took us to Bromo mountain through a very steep and small road, some of them were sag, it's very dangerous to drive if you don't know the environment. Only four wheel drive car could pass it then continues to pass the sea sand. At the foot of Bromo mountain, we took a horse to bring us to Bromo's ladder.

I was the last batch, there's not much horses left. I've got a small horse, I was afraid that I was heavier than the horse. My friend said that my legs were longer than the horse's legs :-) Lucky that we could reach the ladder safe and sound. The horse riding was not too easy, although it walked slowly, it had to climb a small path with some stones on it. It's quite slippery, but the horse was trained well already to pass the difficult path successfully.


To go to the top of the active mountain, you should climb a long stairs. It was cloudy so the crater view was not too clear. Anyway the scenery from the ladder was quite beautiful, you could see the horses at the bottom of the stairs who waited for their passengers and also the Hindu temple as the background. Batok mountain with its green color wall was on the other side of the scenery's background. We had a chance to take some group pictures from different angle at Bromo's foot and in front of the temple.

Bromo and Pananjakan had a beautiful scenery unfortunately the facilities for tourists were not good enough. Right in front of our hotel we also could see a picturesque Batok mountain, the concept of the hotel itself was quite good enough, unfortunately it's not maintained well. The proper accomodation, transportation, and other facilities should be improved to attract more tourist, so the excited feeling to enjoy the magnificent scenery won't be ruined with inadequate facility.