Probolinggo to Cemoro Lawang (5 hours)

The sun finally came up around 5:00 and I felt a little safer, but then the adventure of finding transportation to Cemoro Lawang started.  Erwan from the agency told us that a bus left at 7:00 so we still had about 2 hours.  Then we had a number of people come up to us and tell us that there was no public bus and we'd have to take a minibus.  It was only a difference of about $2, but I didn't like being lied to. 

In their defense, I confused minibus and public bus, so I kept asking for a minibus.  Even so, I kept getting varied responses.  "It leaves at 6:00."  "It leaves at 7:00."  "Go to Ijen instead, they have the most expensive coffee in the world.  It passed through a cat's digestive track before being brewed."  (Yeah, that one's true, we read it online too).  We asked the guy sweeping where the minibuses are, and he took us out the station, around the corner, and to this muddy parking lot with 3 or 4 partridge family buses.  We were like "WTF?"  They quoted us $3 and we said we would come back (because the public bus was $1.20).

We went back to the station and kept hearing that there were no public buses and getting fingers pointing back to the minibus lot.  We decided to wait it out, but by this time, we'd gotten up at 5 the night before, walked around two temples, rode an 8 hour bus, and waited 5 hours at this station, all on about 4 hours of sleep.  So we "gave in" and decided to go with the minibus.  I feel so defeated ... all over about $2.

... we've been waiting since 7:30AM and it's 11:00AM right now.  Apparently, the driver won't leave until the bus was full.  It sat 10 and there are 9 so far ... not only are they keeping us waiting, the stupid kid who came to us in the first place tried to get me to buy a tour from him! NO!!

... finally, we got moving, but now he's been waiting on the driveway for about 15 minutes. It's 11:20.  We waited another 4 hours for this stupid minibus to take us to see a volcano

... a minibus is not just a small bus, it's a 30-year-old 10-seated van that can hold 20 people.  I couldn't believe how many people fit on the bus.  It was really something else.  The guy who sold us the ticket was even hanging on outside the bus, holding the door closed because there were too many people.  Some kid gave up his seat next to me fir an old lady ... I thought he got off, but nope, 20 minutes later I saw him climb off the roof.

This was the first 30 minutes, once we started going toward Mt. Bromo, it satyrs to empty and I got to relax a bit. 

The weather cooled down a bit, and there were really beautiful green hills with thick fog.  I was excited to feel cold air again, after 3 weeks of hot and humid.   


(This isn't the exact one, but something like this)
  

(We didn't ride this, but it's another type of transport)