We spent close to three weeks making our way across Java, from Jakarta eastwards to Bali. The weather was spectacular for the whole two months we were in Indonesia. Clear skies and hot days, but not so much that stifling, close heat you get in mainland Southeast Asia. More like a perfect summer's day at the beach in NZ. After leaving Yogyakarta (where we took these pics), in central Java, we decided to do a volcano tour. It's quite a mission.

We checked out of our Yogya guesthouse at midday, killed time around town for hours, waiting on that midnight train to Geor....er...Malang. It didn't come at midnight. It came at around two, then it was six hours to Malang, with no hope of sleep under the glaring halogen lights. We chugged into Malang, disembarked, made for a waffle house, and then wandered aimlessly for a couple hours thanks to a poorly dropped google maps pin and my sleep-deprived orienteering skills. We found our next guesthouse, slept a couple hours, then headed back out to tee up a tour guide.

The tour picks you up at 1am, to get you to Bromo by 4am for the sunrise (which you watch from a viewing platform a couple K's away). Then you get taken across the Sand Sea in a wicked 4WD (pictured), before finally climbing Bromo. It's a gorgeous place, and the crater is incredibly impressive. When you're up there, and you walk away from the guardrail so there's nothing between you and this gaping maw spewing sulphur, it's pretty scary. Nicole didn't seem to have the same vertigo issues as me, but I could barely bring myself to take pictures.

After Bromo, we headed further east towards Kawah Ijen (photos here). We stopped in a little highland town for the evening with a guesthouse catering to people visiting the volcano. We slept from 8pm till Midnight, when we had to be up again so we could make the climb up Kawah Ijen and descent into the crater while it was still dark. This is so you can see the blue flame, a phenomenon caused by burning sulphuric gas in the bottom of the crater—which is obviously more impressive at night.

That descent into the crater is one of the scariest things I've ever done. It was pitch black, freezing cold, slippery as fuck, and I was wearing chinos, a polyester hoodie, and a pair of seven-year-old chucks with the grip completely worn off. I swear to God, those chucks could've killed me. I bailed multiple times while people in proper hiking boots wondered what my problem was. The descent took about 40 minutes and I was scared out of mind the entire time. I've since left those chucks in a hotel trash can on Bali as punishment for trying to murder me. Anyway, getting to the bottom was so worth it. It's a truly incredible sight. I couldn't really photograph it but I took enough mental pictures to last me forever. And the sunrise over the crater lip as we climbed back out—unbelievable. On top of the world looking down on creation type-stuff. I actually sung that a little until Nicole told me to shut up haha.

After Ijen, we drove the rest of the way across Java, hopped a ferry to Bali, flagged a public bus to a town on the central north coast, and by about 4pm we finally got some fucking sleep. Despite the mad pace of it, it was so worth it. A volcano tour is definitely a great way to get to Bali from Java.