Ijen, Java (Tuesday 12 July)

Another early start, 4.30 for breakfast and on our way at 5am. Nick is very I’ll, vomiting all through the night. Nick and Annette did a guided jungle walk a week ago near Jakarta. Food they ate on the walk made them both very ill and requiring hospital treatment. By the time I met them they were on the mend but Nick has had a relapse. They won’t go onto the crater walk but go directly to Bali as always intended but not quite yet. Hopefully they will find a doctor. I will miss them.

There is about a 40 minute walk up a steepish mountain trail to get to the crater edge. The early morning views across the mountains and misty valleys are just stunning, moody, and beyond my ability to describe. Photos only give half the story. We come across some gibbons in the trees, my first monkey sighting. The track eventually comes out at the edge of a crater lake and the view is extraordinary. The crater wall from this side is steep and scared by water erosion. Smoke billows from one side. On closer inspection the smoke is coming from pipes and dribbling out of these pipes with the smoke is a yellow liquid. This is near-pure sulphur.

And it is harvested. It hardens and can be chissled off the ground with a crowbar. Human porters then literally carry the chunks of sulphur in baskets suspended over their shoulders. These baskets can total up to 80kg in weight and amazingly these porters of all ages take them from the bottom of the crater up a steep, uneven and slippery path and then down the mountain to a base. It’s an extraordinary effort. They start at 1am and finish around 9am, in the cool of the day and before the afternoon mist rolls in. In that time they will get two trips to the crater. Payment is about 1,500 rupiah per kilogram.

Now add to this busy trail a mob of tourists. Tour groups from all over Java descend on this place to witness the spectacle of the extraordinary landscape as well as the very human method of harvesting the sulphur. So now the narrow steep trail down to the lakes edge is extra busy, even comical – or would be if it wasn’t so serious. Workplace Health and Safety would have this place shut down in an instant! A French tourist fell to her death here in recent years. To the porters it must be frustrating to have all these foreigners on their path and in the way. Some of them do manage to wangle cigarettes out of the visitors, or for a fee they will take you extra close to the action. I did this and got some great shots. If I was to do this again and for anyone thinking of traveling to here, take some cigarettes with you whether you smoke or not and just hand them out to these men. They do appreciate it.

Now for the trip back to Surabaya. Back into the cramped van we head off at 9.30 onto roads fit only for serious 4-wheel drives. We’re in a tired old Toyota van. Some will go to Bali via the ferry while I go to Surabaya. It’s another long slow trip and I reach town around 7pm and bed at 1.30am after a catchup over food and beers with Freddy and Agung. That is an 18 hour day. Not a bad effort for an old fella!

PS. Just an update on my research into how aware the average Indonesian on the street is of the live cattle trade drama. My data may be slightly flawed! The Indonesian word ‘kadal’ means lizard. So when I asked if they knew about Australia stopping all live cattle exporting to Indonesia, all three participants looked confused and responded ‘no’. They hadn’t heard that the live lizard trade had been stopped! I have since found out the drama has been secondary news here but apparently beef isn’t an important part of the average Indonesian’s diet. It is a status thing to have beef on the menu so it may have only effected the well-to-do, who weren’t part of my survey.