Crater Ijen - Kawa (26 photos) Bashny.Net

One of the most colorful, exciting and at the same time terrifying places in Java - Ijen crater. There, in the suffocating smoke from volcanic gases and vapors with boiling sulfur, near the lake, filled with a mixture of hydrochloric and sulfuric acids, works just Indonesian men. They discourage scrap pieces of sulfur, laid them on the basket, and then pick up the 100-pound weight on their shoulders to the crest of the crater and carry down to the collection point.
I do not know how to shoot a severe squeeze and tear reportazhku, I have more and more tales are obtained.
But it will be scary story. For work in the crater of Ijen, in my opinion, one of the toughest jobs in the world, a truly hellish work.

To the east of Java island, hundreds of miles from the ferry to Bali, surrounded by green, forested mountains and surrounded by coffee plantations is Ijen volcano caldera.
Ijen itself is no longer spurts of lava and ash, but still hot, which is manifested in the sulfur fumes, violently breaks out on one of the inside edges of the caldera. There we go.

caldera with an acid lake inside, the view from the highest point of the crater:

The road from the place where you bring a car to the edge of the crater takes just over an hour (about 3 miles at a good climbing up the trail). You are surrounded by rich greenery of the tropical forest, the sun is shining and the birds are chirping, buzzing around the life and triumphs!

It is a neighboring mountain, the view from the trail; Ijen about the same, only smokes

Pretty soon you will start to fall apart at the edges of the road baskets filled with chunks of yellow rock. This is nothing but pure sulfur!

close-up:

The fact is that by noon the entire crater filled with suffocating smoke, so workers are trying to make a catch inside the top as much as possible good, then later to bring it to the reception center.

Mined on the weight of sulfur buying sugar factory, located next to the nearby town of Banyuwangi. Per day workers delivered there from 9 to 12 tons of sulfur is used during the refining of sugar produced from sugar cane. This happens as follows: first press cane is crushed to install and it is extracted from "raw juice" - a liquid gray or dark green color, which contains sucrose, glucose, gum, pectin, acid and various kinds of pollution. Methods for cleaning up the juice over the centuries have changed little. Before the juice is heated in large vats over an open fire, and to remove the "non-sugars" added to his ashes; Now, in order to precipitate impurities using lime milk. Where sugar produced per local consumption, diffusion juice immediately before addition of lime treated with sulfur dioxide (sulfurous gas) - for accelerating the bleaching and cleaning. Sugar turns yellowish, ie not completely cleared, but quite palatable.

And here is the workers themselves. They are willing to take pictures with tourists for cigarettes or cookies.
Some kind of quite zhizeradostny,

others more haggard, it is no wonder: the weight of a bunch of baskets up to 100 pounds!

Work is paid by weight adjourned cargo; say that two such baskets porters get only about four dollars ...

Go ahead to the crater. Gradually, the air begins to thicken, there is the smell of hydrogen sulfide.

Over the next bend in the road landscape changes dramatically:
around the brown-red earth, trees and shrubs zachahshie like withered or burned by the heat strongest.

Approximately so I imagined as a child the way to Koshchey Immortal:

Indonesian workers brood, but continue to carry his burden:

Breathing becomes difficult, and I pull brought from Moscow respirators.
Reading about Ijen, many times I have seen a mention of the difficulties rise from the crater when you're covering brimstone cloud. Someone was trying to breathe through a damp cloth - not helped. Some have written that came out a miracle and only with the help of local and that a week later they ached throat and cough tortured.
So did not want to suffer, so even in Moscow, I bought a RPG-67 respirator with filter type B, which protects against acid gases and vapors (sulfur dioxide, sulfur hydride, chlorine, hydrogen chloride, and so on. N.) - Just what you need in this case. Breathe in it for a long time quite uncomfortable (especially when going uphill), breathing turns noisy and difficult, in general, quickly realize how difficult it was to live Darth Vader!

Come to the edge of the crater:

Neither of which the sun is no longer the question. Gray haze mutes all sounds. Sitting side trails and coughs a group of tourists. They obviously want to go down, and they hope to change the wind direction.

So now it blows (the view from the other side of the crater, two hours later):

And this is how this place looks inside a smokescreen:

Thanks respirators we can afford to go down at once, the main thing is not to inhale sharply and deeply.

The road to this hellish place is not the pavement of good intentions, and a heap of stones, somewhere ordered more, somewhere less.
The main rule - give way to him who is raised. After all, if I can stop and pobalansirovat on a ledge over the abyss, the man with the heavy baskets is not only important not to stumble, but do not knock the breath.