Beauty & the Beast

The first volcano I ever glimpsed was the majestic Vesuvius, the killer of the ancient city of Pompeii. Vesuvius became my volcano “prototype”, an imposing cone of gray, dry, parched mountain that failed to lure us into exploring it. In the hot summer of 2011 driving up to its rim in a rented jeep seemed expensive and completely unappealing. We opted to admire it from a shady spot in a valley bellow.

Going to Indonesia though and not getting up close to at least one of its 127 active volcanoes is like going to Italy and missing on gelato altogether. Mt Bromo is the most popular one to visit in East Java and is conveniently located on the route from Jogja to Bali. We arrived late in the evening in the village at the foot of Mt Bromo after a grueling 10 hr drive from Jogjakarta, only to wake up at 3 am and hike the seven km up to a viewpoint to catch the sunrise. We started walking in complete darkness as the veil of the night slowly lifted to reveal a landscape of stunning beauty. From far away Mt Bromo itself looked tiny and rather unassuming. He was not standing lonely and imposing like Vesuvius, but appeared almost shy in the company of its pride buddies ( Bromo is the little dude with the white smoke cap on both the photo above and below).

We had our eyes and camera zoomed on Bromo and failed to notice that we had walked through picturesque farmland laden with produce. The hills rising sharply from the high Plato were covered with a quilt of green gardens with narrow diagonal paths stitching them all together. The neat and endless cabbage patches were lined with rows of onions and potatoes, not spread out on flat land, but following the crazy roller coaster of a landscape. Some fields even climbed the vertical folds of the mountain! How do people farm in such challenging conditions is a logical question when admiring the handiwork of the highland farmers. Not only the locals cultivate the land ONLY by hand with hand operated tools, but trey also harvest the produce and carry it out in big burlap bags on their backs. And those bags are heavy as they are loaded with the healthiest cabbages you can possibly imagine.

The scale of the tended patches of gardens was human, yet I was surprised how neat the gardens looked, how perfectly equal the spaces between the plants and the planting rolls were. In between the green one couldn’t miss the black color of the fertile soil. I assumed any plant you stick in the ground will flourish here. Add to this natural beauty a climate very different than the hot and sticky one in the lowlands. Here we needed jackets and Kuba was in heaven.

The irony was that we were surrounded by amazing greens yet the hostel did not offer salad. They had it on the menu but three days in a row they said “No salad” when I tried to order. We were faced with the choice of either stealing a cabbage from the fields or sucking it up. Well, we played safe and sucked it up. For three days our only greens were a handful of sugar snap peas from a plant by the road. We are still making up for the vitamin deficiency here in Bali.

One of the reasons we didn’t dare steal THE cabbage was because the local people looked tough. Their faces showed that they spent their days outside. All the men wore colorful loop scarves/ sarongs slung over one shoulder. The scarves were used in multitude of configurations from a hood in the rain to a full body wrap against the cold mornings and evenings, illustrated by this cute 10 year boy whom we met on our walk.

Up close Mt Bromo was quite intimidating. All color suddenly disappeared and the landscape became awash in shades of gray, accented with the black blue of the sandy soil and the milky white of the volcanic fumes .The cloud of sulfur vapor was constantly raising from the heart of the caldera, stinging our eyes and the back of our throats…The sound of water bubbling inside was loud and scary. Looking in was like glimpsing in a foreign world we knew nothing of. It was intriguing, mysterious and foreign and made us feel tiny and insignificant in the big picture of things. Such a cliche, right?

I personally felt much better admiring Mt Bromo from afar while walking along the narrow paths between the beautiful cabbage patches.

At the end of our stay we were sad when it was time to go. The three magical days in Bromoland had transformed us into a passionate volcano fans. Next on our list was Kawah Ijen, the volcano famous for its Blue flames of burning sulfur.

Thanks for reading,

-M

The name of Bromo is derived from the Javanese pronunciation of Brahma, the Hindu creator god.