Unfortunately, Pepe’s domain only extended to Ijen, but at least he still wanted to come along with us for the drive to Bromo.  We stopped at tourist office in Probalingo to finalize payment for “Bromo system”  aka prearranged tourist plan.   We stopped by an internet cafe so Mandy could call her mother for her birthday, but she could only leave a message since it was around 3am in VA.

We drove for several more hours and then checked into Yoschi Hotel near Bromo.  We were now at a high elevation, and the weather had turned really cold.  We passed a lot of vegetable patches that were built into the side of the mountains.  Yoschi’s was a cute hostel with lots of character, landscaped gardens, etc… Though we were disappointed that the hot water didn’t work in our bathroom. We scrubbed our skin to try to get the sulfur smell off.  We had dinner, but we had to watch our cash since we were giving most of it to Pepe and Indra for tips and there were new ATMs for 100km.  We said goodbye to them. and went to bed around 9pm.

This time we got to sleep in a bit, until 3am!  We were the last ones to pick up our boxed breakfast (which contained exactly two pieces of toast), and jumped on the last jeep to the sunrise viewing spot.  Even though they could barely fit the four of us in the back of the jeep, we stopped along the way and picked up two MORE people!  Crazy.  We drove 45 minutes and then climbed for 15 to see a beautiful sunrise over Mt. Bromo (from another nearby mountain).  Then we went back to the jeep and drove to actual Bromo.  We walked a across a field of sand and then ascended to mountain steps with hundreds of other people.  It was definitely beautiful, but in our opinion, nowhere near as special as Ijen.

We went back to Yoschi’s and quickly checked out.  We were glad we didn’t order any more food because they hit us with a 20% room tax (damn “Bromo System”!)  so we were no completely out of cash.  We were in a bit of rush because we had a 10 hour drive ahead of us to get to Yogyakarta and we knew we only had one night there.  Even though we bought a ticket for a 9:30 bus, we didn’t actually get on the road until 11:30 (after a brief stop in Probolingo at the ATM).  Somehow it was just me and Amanda in the 10 person van with a driver who spoke zero English.  He was quite a character though and pretty entertaining.  We also appreciated that he was the only person that had met that actually asked us if we minded if he smoked (we said it was cool when he let us know that it helped him focus on the road).  At this point we were pretty used to the smell of the ubiquitous crackling indonesian clove cigarettes.  He hauled ass most of the way, wiping his face with a rag, screaming on the cellphone, and occasionally stopping to pick up random people for a few miles (maybe to earn some extra cash).  Finally at 9:30PM, we arrived at the All Seasons Hotel (I had purposely booked a nice room after the previous several insane days of no sleep, but it was still quite cheap).  We had dinner in an empty restaurant at 10PM, then returned to our posh AC room to pass out.