Travel Notes | Going to Bali will make you addicted, a memory from the volcano

The flight arrived in Bali in the evening.

From the first time I saw Bromo's photo online, I felt attached to him and dreamed about him. It and the surrounding mountains are so unique and mysterious, attracting me to cross thousands of mountains and rivers just to take a look at it...

There is no time difference between Bali and China. Surabaya is one hour behind Bali and the flight time is more than an hour.

Take a taxi from the airport to Madakaripura Falls.

As we get closer to the mountainous area, the temperature starts to get cooler, and after entering the mountain it becomes windy and rainy. The mountain road is rugged, and this section of the road is still quite difficult for ordinary cars. Deep and light greens fill the canyon, as if God poured out a whole bottle of paint at once. This green is so rich that it seems to overflow the mountains and forests and reach into the sky.

The waterfall is not that big, but it has a unique style. On the road, I only encountered two American tourists who were soaked in water while laughing and laughing. The silver bell-like laughter reflects the tranquility here, just like a jasper hidden in the mountains, waiting for my affectionate eyes to touch it gently.

Green plants are overwhelming, and even banana leaves grow willfully like trees. I think people are like plants, and different people have their own attributes. Some are as strong as roses; some are as rich as peonies; but I am a faint daisy in this deep mountain. I don’t need to attract the attention of everyone, I just want to bloom quietly in the empty valley. When the wind comes, it will sway; when the rain falls, it will bloom. Sing softly. Very quiet, very calm.

Back to the hotel, we made an appointment for the next two days in Surabaya.

I got up at around two o'clock, packed up, and waited for the driver in the room. At a quarter past three, no one came, so I walked out of the room. It was pitch dark outside, with no people and no cars. When I walked to the gate, I saw jeeps passing by on the road, all of which must have gone to Bromo. Wandered around and returned to the room.

After a while, someone knocked on the door and looked at his watch. It was half past three, half an hour late. I opened the door, and there stood a thin and dark local man at the door, wearing a turban. He said "Miss" to me, and then made a walking gesture. It was another man who didn't speak English. Follow him and walk calmly towards the gate in the dark. I guess he may be a tour guide, maybe the car hasn't arrived yet. After walking out of the gate, I walked less than two steps to a car parked on the side of the road. It was also a Jeep. He opened the left door (the steering wheel of Indonesian cars is on the right), I pulled the handle and got up, and saw that there was already a passenger in the front passenger seat, a blonde girl. The man went to the other side. It turned out that he was the driver, but he walked leisurely all the way. I really admire this ability to be calm.

I feel that Indonesian people are relatively calm. No matter how traffic jams happen, they will not show impatience, will not get stuck in the queue, and will not show anger. Bali is full of traffic and traffic jams are quite serious, but we haven't seen a single scraping accident or encountered any irritable drivers, which is in sharp contrast to the Chinese. The overall feeling is that Indonesian folk customs are quite simple.

After getting on the bus and sitting down, I turned my face and said to the girl: Only yourself? Without waiting for her answer, I looked back. The back was already full and I couldn’t see clearly in the dark. The seats were two vertical rows. , there were people sitting on both sides, about four people, plus me and the girl next to me, there were six tourists in total. It’s full, so I’m embarrassed to speak any more.

The car meandered forward in the darkness, and it was impossible to see where the road was. It seemed to be running on a wasteland. The road was bumpy from time to time. The driver probably knew the terrain well, otherwise it would be like driving on the Gobi desert without a trace. Further forward, there are road pillars on the left, which seems to be a road up the mountain. A group of people were speechless all the way, with only the roar of the engine in their ears. The jeep started to crawl, and they heard the driver changing gears from time to time, from first gear to second gear, and from second gear to first gear. The mountain road was quite steep.

The road is full of jeeps of the same color, red, orange, red, green, blue, blue and purple. An hour later, I felt I had reached the top of the mountain. The narrow road was full of cars parked end to end on both sides. Our car reached the top. There is no one to manage it, but the car that comes first is parked farther away, leaving enough parking space for the car that arrives later, so the car that comes later will not fall down because there is no parking space in front, and the mountain road only leaves room for parking. The width of a car makes it impossible to reverse. I don’t know how they accomplished such a difficult deployment without management. Fortunately, we arrived relatively late, so the parking location was closer to the top of the mountain. Those who arrived early had to climb up by themselves.

The girl sitting next to me started chatting with me as soon as we got off the bus. Maybe it’s because Sam and I are the only women, or maybe we are traveling alone, so we naturally go up the mountain together.

Everyone is in their seats, waiting for Father Sun's warm smile.

Indonesia is located at the junction of three major tectonic plates, and 16% of the world's active volcanoes are in Indonesia. Also because of the frequent volcanic activity, the magnificent terrain and beautiful scenery formed by the volcano itself and its surrounding areas have attracted attention from all over the world.

Located in eastern Java, Indonesia, Mount Bromo is an active volcano (2329 meters) in the center of the Tengger Mountains. With a forbidding lunar surface-like landscape, it is one of the most spectacular landscapes in Indonesia. In the darkness, there were many people standing on the winding ridge. What was in front of us was a light ink color. Alpine clouds and mist can be vaguely seen.

The silky mist surrounds the collarbones of the mountains like a necklace

On the horizon, like a brush vaguely outlines a silver line glowing with blue light, slowly smearing layer by layer in people's expectant eyes, and then there is the rising sun, and the endless light containing hope is about to begin. The sky spreads across this vast land. In people's eager desire, the sun slowly but firmly crossed the horizon, and the gorgeous light instantly covered the earth. The mountains in front of me gradually revealed their true appearance clearly. The high mountains are surrounded by white silky clouds, and the tall and straight figures of the mountains are displayed in front of us. You can still see the white smoke rising from the crater not far away...

Between the rolling sea of ​​clouds, cone-shaped mountains are revealed, like giant toys plucked from the sky, with sharp edges and corners, so lonely and proud! The smoking one is the famous Mount Bromo, and behind it there is a more perfectly conical mountain, which is Mount Semeru, the highest peak here.

Standing on the top of the mountain, it seems like the end of the world is in front of you. The golden morning glow and desolate coldness are like a fairyland. When you are in it, you feel like you are in another world, as ethereal as a dream.

The convoy drove in the embrace of the mountains. In order to see the true appearance of the volcano, people from all over the world gathered here.

The ground is covered with black rock ash from volcanic eruptions. The last eruption was in 2011 and it has been active recently, so climbing is prohibited.

I boarded the Toyota minivan that came to pick me up and followed the group of people in the car to the next destination – Mount Ijen.

When it comes to volcanic magma, the first thing that comes to mind is the raging red color. However, the magma of the Kawah Ijen volcano in East Java, Indonesia, is blue-purple. It looks like it is on another planet, like the fire of hell, cold and stunning. And mysterious. There are only two places in the world with such weird blue fire, one in Indonesia and the other in the Arctic.

A 20-kilometer-wide crater is formed by multiple small complex volcanoes, and the northern wall of the crater is an arc-shaped ridge. Among them, Merapi volcano in the east is the highest point with an altitude of 2799 meters; to the west is the famous active volcano-Ijen volcano, whose burning temperature is as high as 115 degrees Celsius and the flame can be as high as 600 degrees Celsius. It has a crater lake about 1 km wide and is known to be rich in sulfur. The volcanic lake has a depth of 200 meters and an area of ​​0.41 square kilometers. It is recognized as the most acidic volcanic lake in the world, with a Ph value of only 0.5.

As if I was an agent, different vehicles took me from one place to another. After performing the "mission", another car was waiting and then emerged from another place. Every driver and "mission execution team" who appears are strangers and only appear once. Miraculously, they are perfectly connected every time!

Stayed at a hotel not far from the volcano. We have to set off at one o'clock in the morning the next day. In order to welcome the sunrise of the two volcanoes, we have gotten up earlier every day. Because I could only sleep for two or three hours, even my sleep became dreamy.

A tour guide received us, and after a brief introduction, he led us to start climbing up the mountain. The road to Ijen is steeper than Bromo, so there are few tourists. Some people say that if Bromo is rated at 80 points for difficulty, Mount Ijen can be rated at 150 points.

In the darkness, we moved closer to the top of the mountain. Before I knew it, I was at the front of the line. I have a habit of hiking. I like to go all out in one go. Although I am very tired, I don’t want to rest. As I walked, I could see the top of the mountain without realizing it. I turned around and saw no other people, but suddenly I saw the lights at the foot of the mountain, which were the Milky Way scattered in the world. I stopped and waited. My sweat-soaked clothes were blown by the wind and I felt cold, so I continued climbing.

Reaching the top of the mountain an hour and a half later, I waited at an obvious location. They arrived one after another ten minutes later. After the team gathered together, the tour guide led us along the gravel road for more than half an hour all the way down to the crater. On the way, we occasionally stepped aside to give way to the miners transporting sulfur.

In addition to the blue flames, Mount Ijen has another attraction - here is a group of people engaged in "the most dangerous profession in the world", they are sulfur miners. Gases ejected from the volcano form sulfur through fumaroles in the mountain pass, and local miners make a living digging these sulfur deposits. Not to mention that Ijin is an active volcano that is erupting at any time. The sulfur powder mixed in the air and the billowing smoke floating everywhere make this place a "purgatory on earth", and they only have simple protective masks, and some even have There is no protection. Many people who are exposed to toxic gases for a long time will not live past the age of fifty. In order to maintain their family's livelihood, they had to make such a choice. There is a sharp contrast between the hard life and the beautiful scenery in front of you.

There are rugged roads under my feet, but above my head are stars all over the sky. Each star emits a dazzling and cold light like diamonds, which suddenly reminds me of the starry sky painted by Van Gogh. The last time I saw such a bright starry sky was in 2007 at the foot of the pure air Alps in Austria. It's a luxury to be able to relive a galaxy like this again. The stars are densely packed in the sky, and the particles are extremely huge. In a daze, I seemed like a speck of dust picked up by the breeze, flying away from the earth and swimming in outer space. I was kissed by the huge deep blue and melted into this vast and ethereal universe in ecstasy...

The growing smell of sulfur in the air brought me back to reality. We were getting closer to the crater, so we took out the masks the tour guide gave us and put them on. I finally reached the bottom of the valley with one step deep and one shallow, and finally saw the burning blue flames.

Huge dark volcanic craters, unfathomable craters, hot and glowing blue lava, riddled ground, and the suffocating smell of sulfur. This intertwined beauty of cold and warm seems to take you into another time and space in an instant. The constantly dancing "Hell Fire" is like a kiss from the devil, telling the incomparable attachment to the world...

The magma flowing out of the volcano itself is orange-red, and along with the magma is sulfur gas with a temperature as high as 600 degrees. These dense gases are ignited by the lava and burn slowly after contacting oxygen. That is to say, when the hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide gases surrounding the volcano come into contact with the air at extremely high pressure and high temperature, a beautiful blue flame will be produced. Sometimes gases flow out along the crater and condense into liquid. Sulfur burns to form "flowing blue magma", which is the poignant and strange "blue fire of hell".

As I approached the crater, the thick smoke instantly overwhelmed me, making me burst into tears. I couldn't even open my eyes, so I fled in a hurry.

Indonesia accounts for two of the ten largest volcanic eruptions that have changed the planet. Mount Tambora continued to erupt from April 10 to 11, 1815, with an explosive index of 7, killing nearly 92,000 people. The volcanic ash produced caused the global temperature to drop by more than 2.8 degrees Celsius, and even prevented normal sowing in 1816. It was called the "year without summer" and was the largest in the past two centuries.

Witnessed the "Blue Fire of Hell" and climbed back to the top of the mountain the same way. What greets us is still the charming morning glow. In the hazy sky, the blue-green lake appeared in front of us. Looking down from the top of the mountain, this lake as quiet and beautiful as heaven looks like the tears of a planet. Because the hydrochloric acid content is extremely high and the lake water is turquoise in color, it is also recognized as "the largest acidic volcanic lake in the world."

From the shadows in the night, to the hazy in the morning glow, until the golden light of the sun fills the mountain lakes. We walked around this tear of heaven on the ridge, admiring this dreamy beauty from different angles of light and shadow. People from all over the world stared at it for a long time and couldn't bear to leave. I want to take one more look, and I want this scene to be deeply engraved in my mind.

I am like a toddler, staggering but full of passion and desire for the unknown.

Although I was reckless, made mistakes, and fell down, I never gave up easily. Perhaps it was this foolishness that allowed me to experience a lot of hardships, see a lot of different scenery, and meet so many interesting souls.

I will bravely walk on this road of my own...