Very high expectations and eager to see a wonder of nature, we took two internal flights from central to east Java, and assumed a very challenging agenda in order to climb the famous Ijen volcano. By challenging agenda, we are referring to the hours at which we were hiking, and the physical endurance it required. And all of this for what? To see the highly spoken of electric-blue flames emitted by the volcano at night.

The Ijen Crater is 2,800 meters high, and is a well known volcano in Indonesia with an emerald-green acid crater lake in the center. This crater is the site of an intensive sulfur mining labor operation, in which miners are carrying baskets of sulphur from the floor of the crater up to the rim and then another 3km down to the village where they get paid. These baskets weigh easily 150 kg and this is all carried on the miners’ shoulders. Unfortunately they are paid very little, despite the extreme physical effort that their job requires.

During the nighttime sulphuric gas ignites flames which emerge from being cracked with temperatures of up to 600 degrees Celsius. The flames that are emitted have an electric-blue color, and are the largest in the world. One of our main reasons to climb the volcano was to see this phenomenon of nature, in spite of the challenging hike that this meant.

We were picked up at 12.00am from our hotel, and drove almost 2 hours to the base of the volcano where the hike began. Upon arriving we had to wait until 3am to begin (a great hour to sit around waiting!) as due to very high sulphur levels they were not permitting tourists to enter any earlier. There were a few other people also waiting, and as the hour went by, many more joined. In fact, we were very surprised to see so many people.

As we began hiking it was pitch black, with the only light coming from our flashlights and the thousands of stars illuminating the sky. It was truly impressive when looking up, we had never seen the stars shining like that before. The hike itself was very challenging, 90% uphill at a significant slope. As we were afraid we would miss the flames, we were going at quite a fast pace, making it to the rim in slightly over one hour. In fact, we were almost the first ones that made it up, after two trail runners that arrived shortly before. We definetly felt the pain later on from this early morning sprint.

Once arriving, a local miner guided us down 45 minutes to the crater floor where we would witness the magic. Only starting to walk down, the smell of sulphur was reaching a level where it was almost unbearable, so we put on some thin masks we had bought in Vietnam to protect against dust when riding a motorbike or tuk-tuk. We soon found out these masks were useless. Upon approaching the floor of the crater, the level of sulphur was just too intense. Luckily, our local guide had two fantastic heavy-duty gas masks for us.

And then we saw it… The electric-blue flames! They were in fact quite impressive, however we believe that as our expectations were so high, for us it was over-hyped for what it was. Especially given the extremely tough hike at early morning hours that is not made for all (us included). In any case, it was very special to see this wonder of nature, and interesting (yet sad) to see how the miners are working down there, as well as carrying these tremendously heavy baskets uphill. They are truly doing a painstaking job and putting their health at risk for pennies, which is very upsetting.

After this, we had to quickly walk back up to the peak to make it in time for sunrise… Martina was at this point feeling very weak, but slowly both of us made it up to the rim again. Another 30 minutes uphill, not nearly as steep, brought us to the viewpoint for sunrise, which was truly spectacular. The view was over another volcano further away, that was surrounded by a larger lake, forest and the ocean. After everything we had been through, it was very rewarding just being there admiring this marvelous scene.

Looking at the Ijen Crater was also quite impressive, as the lake was filled with clouds that were slowly making their way up. However, all you saw was the rim, and a steep fall into…? Unfortunately the clouds did not make their way out, and by 7am our energy was almost gone with still another 1-hour downhill hike ahead of us, so we decided to leave. Sometimes you just can’t have it all.

The walk down was almost more challenging than going up. It was so steep you had to use a lot of energy not to slip and fall, especially as we were so tired, it felt like we were practically sleep-walking zombies. The clouds were still leaving and slowly moving up, giving the mountains a mystic look, of which we managed to take some great shots!

What a rewarding hike after having seen the wonderful things that were up there. As you can imagine, as soon as we made it to the car, we fell immediately asleep, and once home, we took a looonnng nap before finally moving onto our next exciting destination: Bali.