Probolinggo/ Cemara Lawang

This is where to stay to climb Mount Bromo. It's a small place, pretty similar to where we stayed for Ijen, but we stayed in more of a town than a village here. There's not a lot else to do so we stayed for one night

Accommodation
We stayed at Sedular Homestay. This place was good but a lot more expensive than Ijen (still super cheap though). It had WiFi, and we got a private triple room. It had a squat toilet but hot showers and was right in the centre of town.

Getting around
From Probolinggo bus station minibuses do the 90 minute drive to Cemara Lawang (IS THIS RIGHT???). The bus station is notorious for scams (cute right??) but we were told multiple times by staff that the tickets should be 35,000 each. When our bus arrived in the town the driver said that it was 60,000 each. We had been travelling all day and were all super grumpy and put up a massive fight against paying the extra, leading to the driver standing on the doorstep of our homestay for about half an hour. In retrospect possibly a little petty of us?? Lol

Things to do
There are jeeps everywhere offering sunrise tours of Bromo. After our night climb of Ijen the previous evening we were very much not okay with a 4am wake up, and I'd seen online that you can walk to Bromo from the village.

After some breakfast we did the climb. It's about an hour to the base across essentially a desert. If you've ever played the Sims 2 picture Strange Town (lol). To get down to it you have to go down a mud path which takes like 10-15 minutes but is not a pleasant walk. It's SO dusty that the clothes I wore that day still produce dust when I wash them. From there you just walk towards the mountain where all the jeeps are heading. Bromo itself is free to climb, and a lot easier than Ijen. We reached the crater in maybe half an hour? You just climb some stairs. The views are cool and you can see some smoke coming out of the volcano (it is active after all) but we couldn't work out what we were missing.

DO NOT MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE AS US. Lol just a little bit bitter x King Kong hill is the most impressive viewpoint, where almost all photos that you see of Bromo are taken from. We couldn't work out where these photos were taken from, but found out that's where the jeeps take you. Without sounding extremely uncultured, Bromo was a bit of a let down without King Kong hill. Definitely go there, or you'll probably end up just as confused as us.

Food
The area isn't packed with restaurants, but we found a small local place serving pancakes and veggie noodles which made for a good breakfast.

It's pretty remote, so I'd take snacks with you or you'll end up paying loads more than necessary

Just along the road from the bus station is an IndoMaret supermarket where we booked train tickets and got snacks. Next door to that was a really nice restaurant which did THE BEST crispy tofu nuggets. I am still dreaming about them

Getting to/from
Get a mini bus from Probolinggo bus station. If you can fill it it should be 30,000 each, but if not you'll have to pay extra. On the way back we only managed to get 5 people rounded up so had to pay more which was a little annoying but hey ho, we wanted to get to the next place.

We opted to get a local bus to Malang from Probolinggo. Scam central part two x don't buy your ticket until the bus starts moving (though I think we only lost about 50p by not following this). The scams are annoying but seeing Bromo was definitely worth it

General notes
I got super sunburnt climbing Bromo! Nothing like the cool temperature up Ijen

Laura x