31st January

Tour to the Madakaripura waterfalls and the volcano at Mt Bromo. 

It was a day full of great adventures as you can see from the photos. I really don’t enjoy private tours though …it’s hard work. I just like to be, to feel, to experience rather than be bombarded with information. Also the guide was a bit picky about how much I tipped the waterfall guide … too much apparently! I gave him extra as he kept me upright as I waded up stream to get the best view of the waterfalls, mended by flip flops and retrieved them from down river when they fell off! 

The beginning of the trek to the Madakaripura waterfalls

Officially the trail to the waterfall was closed due to recent heavy rain and rock falls, however our guide was happy to take us and we thought 'what the hell'!

After we arrived at the car park we transferred to motorcycles for a couple of kilometres then we had to trek a couple more kilometres. Quite a bit of the walk was on a made up path but then we had to hike up the river bed.

We had to trek in flip-flops because we were walking up the riverbed. It wasn't raining but there were curtain waterfalls all along so it was like being in a heavy rain storm.

A couple of wet adventurers.

The far waterfall in this picture is over 200 metres. We did get much closer but it was hard to get a decent picture.

Difficult to get the scale of this waterfall.

After trekking back to the motorcycles then back to the car we headed further up into the mountains briefly stopping for some lunch.

At these higher elevations the farmers are able to grow different crops. These are cabbages but they also grow onions, potatoes, cauliflower etc. Our concern was soil erosion on these steep mountainsides. Landslides are quite common.

This was as far as we could go in a car.

We transferred to a 'jeep', in-fact a fairly elderly Toyota Landcruiser, for the next part of the journey up Mount Bromo

Our jeep and driver. The horses in the background were one of the options for the next part of the trek - we declined.

The next part of the adventure was walking across black sands which was in-fact volcanic ash.

Should we go any further? Of course. We are on an adventure!

Over 200 steps up to the volcano rim. Now up in the clouds.

At the volcano rim. We couldn't see much because of the cloud cover. There was a strong smell of sulphur and you could hear the volcano bubbling.

Mount Bromo is an active volcano which last erupted in 2016 and could potentially erupt at any time. It is 2329 metres above sea level,

After a long day we headed back to our hotel. A great place to relax and unwind.