Up early again (I'm starting to get used to it...) we have a journey of about an hour before reaching the parking lot. Once there, only 3km separate us from the Ijen crater, but that's without taking into account that it's all uphill again and it will take us almost 1h30!
Also due to the fact that Jitima once again “suffered” and climbed at his own pace, I had to stop several times to wait for him when it was not myself who possibly needed a break. For our “defense” the difference in altitude is quite steep, because it is of the order of 500m in height over 3,2 km of ascent exactly, an average of almost 16%!
For the location training I refer you to this site http://www.earth-of-fire.com/ which explains well with supporting sketches, the Kendeng caldera complex (also called Ijen) was previously a “mega” volcano which after erupting resulted in an enormous explosion forming the caldera (a word of Portuguese origin which means as such “cauldron” and which designates a crater, old or recent, also soberly called “circular depression”).
Current mountains like Kawah Ijen are the consequences of volcanic activity that continued and simply never stopped 50.000 years after this event.
Miners come here to harvest sulfur (which is used in many areas, from medicine to the chemical industry, the best-known example is the use of sulfur for matches) I was going to make a slip of the tongue by writing suffers… because yes they suffer, what these miners do is close to a feat. Twice a day they do the 2km climb that we are doing, go down into the crater, in an atmosphere that is not the most breathable, they tear out these blocks with crowbars, finally their colleagues, those like the one who accompanies us really only load the blocks (porters). So they load their basket with several sulfur rocks of tens of kilos each, bring it all back up, to the top of the crater therefore, then go back down the 3km with generally between 3 to 60kg on their shoulders, sometimes barefoot or simply in flip-flops, in short superhuman. It would even be more than 90km because the ore is destined for a factory in the valley, although they obviously do not go as far as the valley they have to reach a shed where they melt the sulfur with wood fire in large pots before resolidifying them in thin layers and stacking everything in bags, which will be loaded into trucks that will reach the valley. The following photo is not mine but shows the shed in question:
Credit goes to this site
These villagers have “chosen” this system for decades to live and bring in an attractive but trying income in terms of the colossal effort that it requires. I seriously asked a guide on site how the first people had this crazy idea of going down into a crater that was at the time untouched by any development (not that it is well marked, far from it, but it must have been even worse…) and to start collecting sulfur by the kilo and doing the descent. He could not answer me… surely the lure of gain, that motivates…
A little anecdote, we came across a lot of French people, to this same young guide who was accompanying a couple (not French by the way, I "squatted" them a bit by asking several questions...) I made the remark to him, he answered me that there are indeed 80% French people who visit the place! And this according to him, after a certain Mr. Hulot with his show Ushuaïa passed by there 14 years ago...
