I'm not going to joke on this one, everything about it was hard. Our guide Augus woke us up at 1am to begin the 3km hike to the Ijen crater - a world famous sulphur mine. Sulphur occurs naturally as a gas although it is mined in Ijen as a solid. The stifling smell was apparant from the beginning of the hike, little did we know how bad it was going to get...
Walking the first 2 km uphill was much harder than a walk in the peak district, probably because we were at 2000m altitude and also because the air was laced with sulphur. Every breath seemed to constrict our chest, the closer we got the more air we needed, but the only air available was increasing in noxiousness. The final km was a steep descent down the rocky face into the heart of the crater. A BBC film maker described it as the 'jaws of hell' - there really is nothing like it. In the darkness of the night the blue flame from the spontaneously burning sulphur is visible. You can also see thick clouds of smoke, the wind carrying them in waves away from the crater, changing direction on a whim.
We approached as close as we could get and i started taking some long exposure shots of the blue flame. Now we were on the brink of the crater, the stench becoming really debilitating. Even while the wind blew the smoke away from us we had our faces covered to filter out the smoke. Then it happened ... the winds changed, and it was our turn to face the full hit of a poisonous yellow sulphur cloud. How can I describe to you how that felt? It was suffocating at a time when we were desperate for air. It was too thick to see through at a time when we needed to escape. It burned our eyes when we needed to see the most. It was horrible, burning, asphyxiating. I cannot think of a worse sensation.
God help those faced with chemical warfare.
And then there were the miners...! Those guys, the most insanely rock hard people I have ever come across. We got one hit of that sulphur cloud, they stand in it for several minutes at a time mining the solid sulphur... between 60 - 90kg of the stuff, which they then carry 3km back to the nearest village on simple bamboo baskets which rest on one shoulder. The first km back to the village is a steep rocky incline which is difficult enough with no weight on your shoulders! Some of them do it barefoot, the rest in flip flops. The average age of the miners is 55 years old! They're mental, proper mind blowing. Their strategy when mining is simply to hold their breath. No fancy gas masks, just straight up in the sulphur cloud. It goes without saying that the older ones all have respiratory problems... we walked past a loaded bamboo basket on our way back to the car and i ccouldn't move it an inch!
We left Ijen as the sun rose giving us truly glorious views of the nearby mountains. Our clothes smelt of sulphur for days later, even after having them washed. Ijen has left an indelible impression on us, it wasn't just a spectacular sight.... we tasted it. It is something I would recommend seeing but only once. Glad we did it and I hope that the experience will teach us what we can never learn through books or 2nd hand knowledge.
Experiential knowledge bringing expansion with certainty,
Certainly more valuable than 2nd hand philosophy...
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