Back to hiking for a living

Now that the cultural sites were out of the way, we had only Gunung Bromo and the Ijen Plateau left in Java. Unfortunately, both required a bit of hiking and we're getting lazier by the moment.

Worse, Bromo required waking up for sunrise. Errrrg. Bromo is the little crater in the picture below. I forget the name of the big mountain in the background, but it is an active volcano that spews a plume of smoke up every 20 minutes or so.

The Ijen crater rises above beautiful forests and coffee plantations. A healthy hike up to the top offers a view over a captive lake and steaming sulfur vents. The hike down to the lake is insanely steep and quite dangerous as intense sulfur clouds pass by now and then, both blinding and suffocating all hikers. We, of course, hiked all the way down and played in the sulfur clouds. I got a little too close once and came as close as I ever have to suffocating. It's actually the incredibly intense burning sensation caused by the sulfur that really does it.
What makes this place so interesting is that it is an active sulfur mine. Miners head up the hill and into the crater where they pick up 150 to 180 pounds of sulfur to carry back up the treacherous crater trail. It is absolutely insane what these guys subject themselves to for $4.
I tried out a miner's load and could barely keep my balance. The sulfur weighed as much as me and much more than the little miner!