Hitched to Sukosari - on the way to Ijen Crater

Our first night after landed at Surabaya was nice, Shanty's long time cyber friend -Jun picked us up at the airport, took us to grab some lips smacking pecel and dropped us at our host's place. We joined Surabaya Couchsurfing gathering that night at a very nice apartment that made Shanty urged to do number two there, she believes that by doing that, she'll have those kind of apartment too one day :D

We left Surabaya the next morning to catch bus to Ijen Crater. We've been told that first we need to take bus to Probolinggo (3 hours from Surabaya), then continue with another bus to Bondowoso (another 3 hours). Since we started at 9AM, apparently that's not early enough to catch minivan/Elf to Sempol (3 hours more before taking 1 hour Ojek/motorcycle taxi to Paltuding/hiking starting point), the last Elf is at 12PM and we arrived at Bondowoso at 3PM. We were in big dilemma, if we stay overnight at Bondowoso, means we're 4 hours more to get to Paltuding and we might be arrived there too late the next day. Early hike is mostly recommended!!

A nice old man gave us ride from Bondowoso bus terminal to a junction named Gardu Atak, we could have just take ojek ride directly to Paltuding at that time, but cos we're too stingy, we tried to hitchhike, and luckily a lady stopped and gave us ride to Sukosari, a village an hour from Bondowoso, we thought well that's not bad, we can try to catch another ride again to get closer to Paltuding, so we hopped on. After some talks, the lady ended up offering us to stay at her place since it's getting dark soon and it's not safe to travel those bumpy road at nighttime. How come you resist nice offering like that, right? It's one of the most touching feeling I ever felt once we arrived at her house. An old lady (the oldest you could ever imagine; humped back with whole gray hair and no teeth) haste toward us, to greet and shook our hands with big grin on her wrinkled face. I suddenly knew how it feels to be a president or celebrity, even they might never get this kind of greeting anyway. The warmest welcome I've ever got in my life :')

She happens to be our host, Bu Supri's maid, she only speaks Maduranese, and has super power, she could do the dishes in total darkness, I was about to help, before realized I could barely see anything, then I gave up :(

Patrick and Bu Supri's granddaughter
Bu Supri seems to be a respectable lady in those village, she has three huge houses next to each other, the first one is used to be her daughter in law's physician clinic (those clinic bed scared Shanty a lil bit and made her wondered how if we wake up the next morning with no kidney, or maybe even already dead mutilated, guess she watched too many thrillers). The rooms are in the first house, but we need to get to the second house for bathroom, and third house for kitchen. With three houses, they don't even have proper dining room, so we ate outside, but that's just even better cos the weather was just so fine, chill but not too cold, just perfect :) I'd always remember the chilli we had those night as one of the best I've ever got, it's literally only chillies grinded with salt. Or is it just because the tasty chicken we had, or...may be the nice windy afternoon, may be those warm hearted humans I'm eating with, may be...