East Java’s Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park (aka, within Indonesia, as “TNBTS”) contains multiple volcanoes.
Mount Semeru (3,676 metres) is Java’s highest peak, atop which snow sometimes sits, albeit briefly.
However, the park’s “tourist magnet” is a volcano that is much less lofty, but currently much more active
Mount Bromo (2, 329 metres) is surrounded by Indonesia’s only desert-like expanse.
Bromo is one of the four or five “new” volcanoes (visibility was limited when we were there. some sources say “four”, others say “five”) that have arisen from the floor of the huge caldera created by the much older Tengger volcano.
The Tengger Sand Sea’s “sands” are a mix of volcanic ash and sand – the mostly-basaltic “fruit” of Bromo’s eruptions.
I took the featured photo at 6.31 am on 23 October 2024, as we were walking across part of the “Sand Sea”, en route to the base of Mt Bromo.
As you can see in the featured image, the sandy surface of this “sea” is sometimes “punctuated” by lava rocks.
(we did walk up to the rim of Bromo’s crater, and look into its “cauldron”)
The photo below was taken twenty minutes earlier, looking down to the “Sand Sea” from the Tengger caldera’s rim.
Scattered across the “sand” – and clearly visible, if you zoom in on/enlarge the photo – are many (mostly, white) rectangular shapes; each one is the roof of a tourist-carrying 4WD.
“TNBTS” is an amazing, and surprisingly chilly place. Pelican Yoga will eventually devote a whole lot more attention to its volcanoes…and to some others, elsewhere in Java.
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