Java’s smoking giant—Mt Bromo

I’d chosen Probolinggo because I wasn’t done with volcanoes despite the gruelling trek earlier. South-west of the city was Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park where we travelled into a lunar landscape around a smoking crater.

Standing on the rim of Mt Bromo’s crater

I thought my daughter would be thrilled to take a pony ride to the base of the crater while I hiked beside her, but she later told me she was angry because the pony’s owner kept control of the reins—a fact I was grateful for.

Looking down into Mr Bromo’s crater

We climbed the steps to the rim and looked down some two hundred metres into the bowl of the earth where sulfuric fumes swept from the bottom spewing over us. It was only nine years since the volcano had last erupted, and several years after our visit when I heard Mt Bromo erupted again.