In the Mountains of East Java. By Graham Foss. (1833)[DRAFT 1]

 

In the Mountains of East Java. By Graham Foss. (1833)

Part 2 - Ijen Crater

Two days after our expedition to Semeru, we were eighty miles further east, driving towards the Ijen Crater. The awe of seeing the mighty Mount Semeru was still fresh in my mind, and I had been told that this time the walk would be longer. I knew this was going to be a different sort of experience but wasn’t sure how. My wife, Ida, was too busy organising everything to field any questions, so I sat in the back seat of the big SUV and contented myself to be as oblivious to what was going to happen next as one of our three children.

Not for the first time I reflect on how much more confidence my wife has when she is back home in Indonesia. This is her land, her people, and her language. She is very good at this sort of thing - I trust in mummy.

Adi, our guide, is joined by his brother, the driver. I’m not sure of the arrangements, I think this may be his car we are using. We have come up from the coastal city of Banyuwangi and arrived at our hotel in the middle of the night. We showered, ate, and slept a scant few hours before setting off again, still in the dark.

It’s a long drive up to what they are calling base camp. The children sleep, and I quietly tease Ida about how she plans our tours – we have an itinerary that would exhaust fit young backpackers I tell her, let alone a family of five. She tells me about our hotel, it is called Hidden Paradise, and we are apparently the first mixed race family that has stayed there. It is not uncommon for my wife to be mistaken for my maid in these sorts of places. I am fair skinned, and often a maid is taken on trips like this to manage the children, so it is not an altogether unreasonable assumption, but still a source of amusement between us.

The drive to base camp takes hours but it is still dark when we finally get there. Adi arranges headlamps and fume masks for everyone, and we join the throng of tourists at the start of the path up to Ijen. The only lights are from torches and headlamps. We certainly need the headlamps, but I wonder if we will really need the fume masks later on.

The path is wide and steep. There are lots of people going up to the crater, and we are part of this strange starlit exodus. There are old men, ex-miners I am told, with small handcarts, offering rides up to the top. Already, even after just the first half an hour of walking I can see Chinese and local Indonesian tourists being pulled up the trail by old men twice their age and half their weight. Squads of young French, German and other nationalities of walkers pass us in the night, a mingle of many languages blowing on the breeze.

My daughter Wendy, our youngest child at nine, tells me she is tired. She has seen the carts. I remind her that she has the blood of the wild mountain people of Scotland in her veins and that she climbed Bennachie when she was six. This is a long steep walk, but there is the occasional gazebo to pause and catch our breath in. Each time we stop in one it is harder to get Wendy up again. The boys are fine, they are both at the end of a growth spurt and consist mainly of legs and elbows.

After the first stop it appears that we have attracted the attention of one of the local porters. A vague figure lurking in the darkness, his name is Mr Paris, and he talks to Ida. She tells me he is offering to take Wendy up to the top in his handcart. I ask how much, and she tells me he wants fifty pounds for it. He is old and grey haired, barely five feet tall and as thin as a chopstick. I wonder how he can possibly go up and down this trail every day, as my knees are already complaining. Fifty quid is a lot of money, and dragging children up mountains happens to be one of my core abilities. I don’t want to be mean or offend anyone, but my instinct is to continue to encourage Wendy to do something she is well capable of. And dang it, Scottish people are not carried up anywhere! And not at that price.

Mr Paris will not leave and dogs us for the three-hour trek right to the top. He talks to my wife, and the higher we go, the lower his price. Forty pounds, then thirty, then twenty. Tell him no, I tell her. Wendy has made it this far, she can make it the rest of the way, she’s stronger than she thinks. Every time she sinks to the ground and says she can’t go on, there is Mr Paris, sensing her weakness. The grim reaper in sandals and shorts. I pick her up again and on we go. I go from being annoyed at him to feeling sorry for him. He would be better hounding someone else I tell Ida. My Paris thinks I am stingy she tells me. I agree with them. Has Mr Paris ever met Scottish people before, I enquire. Although she is making friends with Mr Paris, she is of the same mind as me. Her Asian work ethic has combined with my love of good long walks. Everyone must make it to the top under their own steam. We’re highlanders!

We finally reach the top. It is still dark, but I can see there are no trees around us now. More walking takes us to where we will go down into the crater. I can see the light of a hundred torches down there, bobbing around like lazy fireflies, but the rest is darkness.

It is a long walk down, scrambling from rock to rock in the dark, jostled by the other walkers. It doesn’t feel safe, and in the darkness, it is like we are descending into a deep cave. I can see that Mr Paris is still nearby, evidently having decided to stay with us come what may. Ida has a bad knee, and he is helping her down through the rocks. Fair play to him. By the time we reach the bottom, dawn is breaking, and I get my first sight of the crater, a wide green lake surrounded by rocky cliffs. Off to our left is a large stratum of yellow rocks – sulphur. There are miners pumping water onto it, and this is giving off large clouds of sulphurous steam. The children don their fume masks and pose for pictures. Scatterings of people mill around, foot sore and tired, taking photographs. The smell of sulphur is very strong, heavy in every breath, but the masks are only needed if the wind changes and blows the steam directly into your face.

I sit down and enjoy the dawn light breaking over the lip of the crater. It’s like a different planet. We are sat on a wide ledge overlooking the aquamarine-coloured water below. It is hard to gauge how big it is, but the other side of the crater looks like its hundreds of meters away. There is not a single living thing anywhere apart from walkers like us. As the sun rises, I pick out more details. The landscape is rugged and crumbling, occasionally shrouded in sulphurous steam and in the distance, on the other side of the crater, I can see the thin line of the jungle below. We are all tired, but the dawn light and a sense of adventure brings us new energy as we explore the rocks and ledges. Finally, we sit together, resting our legs before the climb back out, and I enjoy the sensation, the feeling of a job well done, and a walk well walked, that I get at the top of a mountain or at the end of a long forest trail.

On the way back up out of the crater I can see in the weak dawn light that not everyone going up the trail is a tourist. There are sulphur miners too, going up and down the path with baskets on yolks full of bright yellow chunks of sulphur. Some of them sell intricately carved statuettes of the stuff, standing at bends in the path, hawking their works to the passing walkers.

Back up at the lip of Ijen Crater the sun has yet to hit us with its full glare. We can see the clouds below us. The air is thin and still laced with the rotten egg smell of sulphur. I can see now more fully that all around the top of the crater there is nothing at all growing. It is a lunar landscape of rock and dust.

I learn that Ida, Wendy and Mr Paris have come to a deal. Wendy had been bribed to keep going while we were going up with the promise of a handcart ride back down again. As we go back down to the tree line, my middle son, Haider, jumps in too and they start making motorbike noises as Mr Paris skips and bounces down the path. Ida and I must go down more slowly, using sticks taken from the forest to help us. Both my knees are complaining now, and Ida has slowed down even more than I have. Our eldest, Fergus, bounds past us on his young springy bones, gambolling down the hill like a mountain goat.

Eventually we get back to base camp. The sun is very hot now and we collapse in sweaty heaps, cooling off in the AC of the car. The children sleep on the drive back to the hotel.

Back at the Hidden Paradise, we only have a few hours, but make the most of it. The children jump in the pool, and we eat looking over the jungle-covered hills. The only other signs of civilisation are paddy fields terraces cut into the sides of the nearby hills. Paddy fields, then jungle, then mountains, a very different view from anywhere in Scotland, it really does feel like we are in a hidden paradise. Famished I eat everything I’m given for breakfast, and everything left by the kids too. I eat all their chips and order more.

I turn to Ida and ask; can we stay longer? This place is heaven. Sadly, we can’t, my ever-organised wife has the rest of the holiday all planned out and we have a schedule to keep. All I can do is drink in the view and enjoy the cool breeze off the mountains. Maybe one day we’ll come back, but then, I always say that.