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The next morning we waited at our collection point for our jeep, we waited and waited. Anxious that we had been stood up again and with the prospect of missing sunrise we hopped on the back of 2 locals bikes and headed to the mountains. The journey was challenging, in the pitch black of the night they raced across the plain of the volcano to our first location, the viewing platform perched some 300 metres above Bromo on a neighbouring mountain. The volcanic ash was rather deep in some places, which caused multiple skiddages. At this stage we were both thinking that the jeep would have come in handy! Gripping on tight we continued onwards, luckily for us these local boys knew what they were doing and we raced up the mountain at terrific speed, there were no crashes and the adventure the bikes provided was all that bit better than a jeep. Eventually we were on the approach to the viewing platform. The road for half a mile was paved on either side with endless jeeps. The top revealed hundreds of people mainly Indonesian tourists stood eagerly awaiting the arrival of the sun. Photos of the volcano taken, photos of the sunrise taken, and the obligatory photos of us taken with the Indonesians, we were back down the mountain only to be greeted by the local cowboys eagerly pestering lazy tourists to be taken by horseback up to the steaming crater of Mt Bromo. And Emily was one of them!! Spending some time on the edge of the crater enveloped in ash we descended the volcano and headed back to town. To our relief waiting at the guest house was our jeep driver who apologised profusely for missing us in the morning, he reimbursed us for the money we spent on the bikes and we headed for breakfast before squashing into a packed bus for the journey back down the mountain.
Arriving back at our starting point we paid the remainder of money and hopped on the next bus for a 9 hour journey to Yogykarta. As we approached the town we propositioned the bus driver to take us all the way to the Boropadur where we planned to stay in a Guest house near the Boropodur temple, in order to visit the temple in the light of the morning sun. Arriving at midnight we went straight to bed and opted to head to the temple at a more civilised hour the following morning.
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