Nice! Thanks for the update. Glad to hear a good report about the blue fire!

Hi David!
Update! Gary & I had been in touch with you before our trip. We have now returned. Climbed 5 volcanoes…..amazing! Our biggest highlight was the fact that we DID get to see the Blue Fire at Ijen!! We arranged it at the hotel reception when we arrived. It was a midnight pick up, an hour and 15 min drive. We had a coffee near the gates (they opened before 4am) we were the first to reach the bottom, complete with gasmasks, and took some amazing footage of the blueflames even with a.mobile phone. We just asked people to turn off their headlamps for a short time. Yes, the smoke was very overwhelming, gas masks were rendered useless for a few mins. But if you didn’t panic, as some do, then it was pretty scary. Some we saw heading down, shouldn’t have as they were so badly equipped… one wearing crocs! Buffs were not enough protection from the billowing smoke either. Alot were still queueing to go down as daylight came so they never got to see the Blue flames.
So a huge thanks to your input and advice! We got to see it. Or guide was fantastic too.

Hi Mohit, thanks for your comment.

A guide isn’t really needed for the hike if you have a driver. He can take you to the entrance, and from there the path will be pretty clear since there are always lots of other hikers going up.

A guide would probably be a good idea if you want to go down into the crater and try to see blue fire, though. That part is a bit harder to navigate in the dark.

Regards

Good luck! I’ve heard from some more people who have seen the Blue Fire recently, but it still seems to be hit and miss.

Hi David,
Sorry for the late reply. Thankyou for getting back to us with your update. We fly out this weekend! I think we’ll play it by ear and see if anyone is offering any trips. Our tour company has also rescheduled a couple of days, so we may be too far from the Ijen area on the night we had originally proposed to see the Blue fire :-/ May be it’s not meant to be. Thank you for your help! We may not see any further posts as we’re not taking our laptop and may not have any internet to access this page on our phons to see if you’ve replied. We don’t get any notification that you’ve replied, we can only see you have when we go onto your page.

Hi. We just talked to an Indonesian tourist from West Java who saw the blue fire on August 25. Here is her Instagram post about it, and as you can see it was putting on a great show. Lots of blue fire.

My wife talked to her in bahasa and she told us they started hiking at 2 AM. We still haven’t found any tours going at midnight right now, and I don’t know why that is, but apparently you can still see the blue fire with the later start, if you’re lucky.

If I was in your position, I would go ahead and book a tour with free cancellation (either through your main tour provider, or your hotel, or an online tour company) and hope for the best, although sadly there are no guarantees you’ll see the blue fire.

In the meantime, if I find a tour with an earlier departure I’ll post it here for you, as I still think that’d give you a better chance of seeing the blue fire. Hope this helps!

Hi!

We were just wondering if you had any further clarification on any tour companies doing the Blue Fire trips again, now it has re-opened? I’ve come across some companies that state they’re doing the Blue Fire trek but on reading the itinerary/small print you can see that they’re leaving far too late to catch the blue fire in the dark! Any further news on ones that pick you up at midnight and arrive at a decent time to catch them?
Another thing I’ve noted, is that every 1st Friday of the month they close Ijen? Our tour company has changed the original itinerary because of this. So they’re now planning the sunrise trek on the Saturday Oct 7th. (Our previous comments above stated a different day) Any clarification will be appreciated. Many thanks. Gary & Elaine

Hi David, Thanks for your quick replies! Thanks for checking too. Our trip’s arrival in the area to climb Ijen is Oct 5th, that’s the night we were hoping to do the hike to see the blue fire, the group we’re with are doing the sunrise hike on the 6th leaving at 4am….one we were going to miss if we were doing the blue fire hike as we would have been picked up at midnight. However, we are hopeful, so if you’re able to give us an update and a tour recommendation when you know, we’d be very grateful. Thankyou.

Hi guys. Unfortunately it sounds like most Ijen tours are still starting at 2 or 3 AM and skipping the blue fire, even though it’s supposed to be open now. Is your trip date coming up soon? Hopefully things change before long. I’ll try to give an update and a tour recommendation as soon as I know more. Regards