As part of our holiday activities, we went to shoot a rap music video starring Kecil.
Ha! Just kidding. Actually, we just went sight-seeing a mountain 'nearby', and we did dress like that because it was really cold.
Let's start with our destination first. Mt. Bromo is a pretty famous tourist destination in East Java. Both Mama and Daddy had been there when we were younger, and we thought it would be kind of cool to bring the Kiddo along.
The mountain is a bit of a distance away from Surabaya, so, instead of making our own way there, we used a service provided by a travel agency which arranged both transport and local guide.
See, when you go up to a mountain, usually one of the main attraction would be the sunrise. Which is also the case with Bromo. As such, we were picked up from Eyang's house at around 1am (!), and slept in the car. You can also choose to stay at the nearby hotel, but well... in order to catch sunrise, you still have to get up like around 4am or so, no? (And pay more for the hotel. ha!)
The trip from the city was made in a normal city car, but halfway up, we had to change to a 4-wheel drive Jeep due to the very steep roads. The Jeep also proved handy when we traversed the sea of sand later on.
Anyway, we arrived at the perimeter of the sea of sand around 5 am, and it was really dark. There was a lady selling some hot drink. The man in the picture above was boiling the water for the hot drinks. It was still really dark and cold, and Kecil got a serious case of wanting to go back home.
We managed to overcome Kecil's protests and soon picked a spot to settle and watch the sunrise. In the meantime, the sky was starting to turn into like this:
Good thing too, because Kecil stopped asking to go back once there was some color in the sky, and she started playing with the sand underneath. You can see her holding a stick to write/draw on the sand:
Ahem, and at this point, this Mama had to admit something. Me thinks I am no landscape photographer. There were quite a few people with us at the spot, and most of them are busy taking pictures of the sunrise. But this Mama just went... HUH? It is so much more interesting when there are PEOPLE in the picture. But that's just my humble opinion. And anyway, we did get some pics of the sun rising.... as background. Haha!
Kecil was actually given a mask by our guide because she kept coughing (She was actually still having lingering cold and cough when we went there!), but obviously she preferred to play with the mask.
Well, in any case, it was soon bright enough to take picture of the other side of the mountain:
Ahem... yes, Kecil and her damn mask photobombed the picture. Grrrr!
Some shots of the naughty little girl....
Here's one where this Mama hope Kecil was appreciating the view.
Strangely enough, even after experiencing it myself, this Mama finds it a bit hard to believe how cold it was at the mountain then. All of us were dressed in 3 or 4 layers of warm clothing. (In fact, that was our activity in day 1 in Surabaya: finding warm clothing for the Little One, just because she ain't got one then). Our lovely guide was even decked up in a parka and fluffy ear muffs!
Thank goodness it was definitely warmer once the sun was up. Not that we did away with all the layers, of course. It was still quite cold at that elevation. But at least it was not so biting anymore, and Kecil was back in full force of mischief:
Well, soon enough it was time to continue with the trek. We barely reached our final destination, after all, despite the mountain being already within sight:
It was one cool trip, with many pics and quite a few stories, so we'll continue in the next post. Until then!
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