Selo - Indonesia
4/21/05
We had to walk for about half an hour in the village to get to the beginning of the trail. The night was fresh; it was just perfect for a walk, although it was cold for our guide. While we were sweating in our t-shirt, he was wearing a jacket, a winter hat and a scarf. At the bottom of the volcano there is a forest that took us around 3 hours to cross. The vegetation was dense and wet and the path was almost mud. After a while, more and more volcanic rocks composed the soil and at the end of 3 hours the only vegetation left was a few bushes growing in between the rocks. Here the guide had to check, depending on the weather, whether we could keep going or not. Luckily, the weather was favorable so we headed to the top. At this point, the walk became really challenging, the trail almost disappeared; only loose rocks were covering the steep hill, the wind was blowing colder and colder and the clouds were stuck at the same altitude blinding the moonlight. So, everything was dark.
Higher up, the air started to smell sulfur and we started to feel the warmth coming from the ground. Smoke was even coming out of some holes in the rocks. It was quite scary. The clouds were now mixed with smoke, so much smoke that we almost gave up the summit climb because it was getting impossible to breath and we could not see anything. Getting too dangerous, we decided to go back down when a wind started to clear the top. We waited a while to evaluate the situation and finally decided to go to the summit which was just 5 more minutes away. Just before sunrise, amazingly, all the smoke and clouds were gone and the sun rose punctually at 6:15.
We were expecting to see some lava, but there was so much smoke in the crater that we didn't want to take the risk to go down there.
We stayed around one hour at the top enjoying and resting before going back to Selo. From there we went to Cemora Lawang to climb Bromo, another active volcano.
We had to walk for about half an hour in the village to get to the beginning of the trail. The night was fresh; it was just perfect for a walk, although it was cold for our guide. While we were sweating in our t-shirt, he was wearing a jacket, a winter hat and a scarf. At the bottom of the volcano there is a forest that took us around 3 hours to cross. The vegetation was dense and wet and the path was almost mud. After a while, more and more volcanic rocks composed the soil and at the end of 3 hours the only vegetation left was a few bushes growing in between the rocks. Here the guide had to check, depending on the weather, whether we could keep going or not. Luckily, the weather was favorable so we headed to the top. At this point, the walk became really challenging, the trail almost disappeared; only loose rocks were covering the steep hill, the wind was blowing colder and colder and the clouds were stuck at the same altitude blinding the moonlight. So, everything was dark.
Higher up, the air started to smell sulfur and we started to feel the warmth coming from the ground. Smoke was even coming out of some holes in the rocks. It was quite scary. The clouds were now mixed with smoke, so much smoke that we almost gave up the summit climb because it was getting impossible to breath and we could not see anything. Getting too dangerous, we decided to go back down when a wind started to clear the top. We waited a while to evaluate the situation and finally decided to go to the summit which was just 5 more minutes away. Just before sunrise, amazingly, all the smoke and clouds were gone and the sun rose punctually at 6:15.
We were expecting to see some lava, but there was so much smoke in the crater that we didn't want to take the risk to go down there.
We stayed around one hour at the top enjoying and resting before going back to Selo. From there we went to Cemora Lawang to climb Bromo, another active volcano.
posted by Adriano and Angie | 10:14 AM
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