Bali and Java

We said goodbye to Thailand, spending out last day on the beach and our last night sleeping in the Phuket airport for our 5 am flight.

Last beer in Thailand

After arriving in Bali, we quickly booked it out of the mega-mega-super-dooper touristy area, heading to an only uber-touristy areas in Bali and Lombok. We spent four days snorkeling and eating overpriced fried noodles. Two very relaxing days were wiled away on a small relaxing island called Gili Air, where no motorized vehicles are allowed. The snorkeling was awesome - huge expanses of coral. Plus, we saw four sea turtles and I had a staredown with my absolute favorite animal - an octopus!  We have had really good luck with weather during this trip, but it is the rainy season in Indonesia, and its rained for at least a little bit most days we've been here.

Downpour in Bali

Sooo relaxing.

We then headed to Java to explore Gunung Bromo, where we read that we could could climb around the smoldering crater of the volcano, which is in a massive crater of a volcano that erupted one million years ago. This is a picture from the Internet depicting what the area usually looks like.


However, our plans to climb to Bromo's rim were quickly dashed when we arrived at four in the morning to the small mountain town 3 km away from Bromo and discovered that IT WAS ERUPTING. Like, spewing lava, belching smoke, erupting. But not enough to evacuate the town - sweet. So we stayed for a couple days basking in the supreme, window-shaking, ashy awesomeness of Bromo and thanking Indonesia for apparently not having any lawyers or liability forms. During the night, Bromo was shooting lava a few hundred meters in the air - it was quite a sight to behold, that  we didn't even try to capture on camera. Here are a few movies/photos of the action - but unfortunately they are pale representations with out the shaking and roaring of being there... definitely the highlight of the trip.

View of Bromo and the crater floor - you could sit at the temple (which is the white speck to the right of the volcano) and watch the eruption 

View from behind the temple

We hiked for about 10 km around the crater floor, this is the view of Bromo from the west.

The crater walls were huge and beautiful - this is probably about 500 meters tall.

A

There was tons of cool mud on the crater floor. 

View of crater from the town we stayed in. 

Also, on a hilarious note, we were interviewed about our experience live on national Indonesian tv! Look for us at minute 1:30.
http://www.tvonenews.tv/video/49238/pesona_erupsi_bromo.html