Sunrise Volcano Hiking
My new favorite thing?
We’ve been in Indonesia for a month, and I have seen the sun rise over volcanos not one, not two, but four times!
Sunrise volcano hikes are The Thing To Do in Indonesia. I suspect this has something to do with the late morning/afternoon clouds that inevitably enshroud the 147 volcanos in this 17,000-island archipelago (Indonesia is the most volcanically active country in the world!). If you don’t see the mountains at dawn, you probably won’t see them at all. It may also have something to do with the extreme Instagramability of sunrise over a literal volcano.
If you’ve met me, you know that I am aggressively not a morning person. However, I differentiate between morning activities and sunrise activities. The former are tiring, mentally foggy, and to be avoided at all costs. The latter are special. Being up before the sun always feels just a little bit electric, like something magical is afoot. (I wonder if this goes back to being a kid on Christmas morning?)
Our first two sunrises were at Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park on Java. We left our guesthouse at 3:15 am to hike an hour and a half straight up a caldera edge in the dark to view the three volcanos of the park, surrounded by the mist-filled caldera valley. You can do this by motorbike or car, having someone drive you to viewpoints along the caldera rim, but we’re pretty aggressively committed to the why-drive-if-you-can-walk mentality. We didn’t have to go two days in a row, but a) it was somewhat cloudy (albeit in a very cool way) the first day, and b) what else were we doing?
I absolutely love volcanos that look like children’s book drawings of volcanos! And with smoke coming out of the top? Perfection. You’ll notice that we’re wearing a lot of layers — it gets VERY COLD on even tropical island mountains before the sun.
Our next sunrise was at Mount Batur on Bali. Most people do this as a guided day (really just early morning) trip from the tourist hub of Ubud, driving over an hour to the mountain, climbing it in the dark, then driving back. We decided to stay next to the mountain at a guesthouse on the lake because it looked cool and we prefer to do our hikes sans guide. The challenge in this case was that, though Mount Batur is officially open to the public and has no entrance fee, the local mafia controls it and has been known to aggressively hassle anyone who doesn’t pay for their very overpriced “services.” On the recommendation of our guesthouse host we started our hike at 2 am to get past the checkpoints before anyone was manning them. [FWIW, I have mixed feelings about circumventing the charge. On the one hand I support supporting the local economy, but on the other hand I do not support extortion. The way I see it, we stayed at a guesthouse, paid for drivers to and from, and ate at restaurants in the area. Seems like we should be allowed to hike without a guide for a reasonable entrance fee?*]
Anyway, that incredibly early start and the fact that we are reasonably quick hikers meant that we got to the top three hours before sunrise and read our books shivering in the dark while sipping expensive bad coffee until the show started. And the show was worth it! In this case we were on the big caldera, looking across the lake at Mt. Abang and Mt. Agung (the highest mountain on Bali).
After the mists moved in—completely covering the mountain by 8 am—our decision to stay at Batur was fully justified by an excellent guesthouse breakfast, few hours of napping, and an afternoon/evening soaking in the natural hot springs on the edge of the lake.
Our fourth sunrise was Mount Rinjani on Lombok (the island just east of Bali), and this was quite the hike. Rinjani is the second highest mountain in Indonesia and the highest one you can climb. It requires at least one night on the mountain (most people do two), sleeping on the caldera edge before making the sunrise push to the top. We went into it pretty confident; I mean, on this trip alone we’ve done some of the world’s most epic hikes! But oh my god you guys it was so hard.
After a six-hour uphill approach hike to our campsite, the way up to the peak along the caldera edge the next morning was four hours of pre-dawn loose rocks on top of volcanic sand/dust on top of more loose rocks — basically a hikers slip’n’slide. At one point on the way down my feet shot out from under me in that super special momentarily-completely-airborne-full-bodyweight-landing-on-your-tailbone sort of way. Yes, I am still very bruised.
The crazy thing is, this mountain is marketed on the Gili Islands with absolutely no warning of the difficulty. You go from sea level to over 12,000 feet in less than 24 hours with no warning or discussion of altitude symptoms or cautions about hydration! Two of our six group members did it in street sneakers and jeans! One did it in CROCS. For half our group this was their first hike ever. This is a great reminder that outside the US (where liability is king), no one is worrying about you but you — proceed with caution.**
We were sore for two days and vowed it would be our last sunrise hike. Somehow I suspect we are lying. (Ugh literally tomorrow we will likely see the sunrise at Kelimutu National Park on Flores Island.)
* The Batur tour costs about $75 per person. For reference, a nice guesthouse on Bali costs $10-15 a night, and a pretty fancy meal costs about $4. Entrance to Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park was around $10 for a 3-day pass.
** This is also why I don’t do anything riskier than hiking and snorkeling.