The first full day started with a 02:30 AM departure from our very basic inn, with short pretty easy climbs up 2 different viewpoints of the region with great vistas overlooking Bromo and other volcanos, and then a drive to Bromo with moderate/easy climb up several hundred steps to the summit with cool views looking down into the crater and across the region. Then we had a long 6+ hr drive to the inn near Ijen - long day! The next day we started at 01:00 am in order to be instructed in the gas masks and to start our hike up Ijen in time to reach the crater by 4 AM (after that it can be too light to see the blue flame). This is a much harder climb up to the crater, but everyone in our group of 13 people made it. Not everyone decided to descend into the crater, but my friend and i did and I'm glad because it was super cool - exceeded expectations! We are very fast hikers and were among the first to get to the crater floor by ~3:30 AM - it got quite crowded later and the people in our group who arrived then had to jostle for position to get photos. My friend and I already climbed back up to the summit before the sunrise, which i highly recommend because the colors and views were amazing (at this time of year you can't actually see the sunrise because it's behind another mountain, but the views down into the crater and the acid lake are amazing - try to get back up out of the crater floor to the rim for the sunrise if you can! By the time the slower members of the group got back up to the crater rim clouds had already moved in and you could no longer see the acid lake.
The Ijen guides were retired miners who were awesome, gave us a lot of info on what it is like to be a sulfur miner (very hard and dangerous work for $4/day). the other guides and drivers also were great, very friendly and helpful, really kept us all informed of what was going on and what we needed to do.
What wasn't great for me? There is a LOT of driving on this tour; going from Bromo to Ijen is >6 hr and after Ijen we had >6 hr travel to get to our hotel in Denpasar. The hotels are really basic - fine for the backpacking crowd and reasonably clean comfortable bed, but not much more. If you want to stay in a nice place the options may be limited in these areas anyway but you could ask if there's an option. the meals included in the trip were fine, but on the rest of our trip we had great food. Nevertheless, Ijen alone is such an amazing experience that it made the whole trip worthwhile for me.
