We had read little bit online about the best way to get there, however, as most wives know, their husbands know best.?

We didn’t make any bookings as Pete said it would be easier to get an Uber the morning of. We woke up early as it was a 3 hour drive and being the first day of a long weekend we knew we had to get moving. We successfully booked an Uber – I must admit I was surprised that anyone would agree to this job – but had to pay a little extra for the driver to drive back. The trip was going smoothly with minimal traffic for about an hour. After that, we ran into the traffic! The total trip ended up taking 6.5 hours! The total distance travelled…150kms.

We travelled to Carita Beach. This is one of 2 places suggested online to find a speed boat to take us to Krakatau. Unfortunately, as we arrived much later than expected, we had to stay the night at Carita Beach and head to Krakatau the following day. Luckily, in our travels, we managed to find a gentleman that hired his boat out for private tours. We arranged to meet him at 8am the following day and set off in search of a room to stay the night.

Carita Beach we found out, is an extremely popular place with the locals, and being a 4 day long weekend, things weren’t looking good for us. Finally, at the 4th hotel we tried, there was one room left. There weren’t any restaurants in the near vicinity that we could find so we headed back to our hotel restaurant for dinner. The menu was simple and we both went for a nasi goreng which was lovely.

The following day we were up early and headed down to the small harbour to meet the boat. It was a gorgeous day, the sky was blue and the water flat.

We headed off right on 8am and it took 2 hours to arrive at Krakatau. We did a quick circle around the volcano in the boat then disembarked onto the beach. Our guide paid our entrance fee (which was included in our total price) and we headed up the mountain. The vast difference in the types of soil was incredibly interesting and made for some great photos. It was a hot but relatively easy walk to the visitors peak. You can no longer access the very top of the volcano for safety reasons, the the lookout view was breathtaking.

We were able to spend as long as we wanted up the top, wandering around and checking out the different types of rocks and getting all kinds of photos. Our guide explained the story of Krakatau and told us his recount of the most recent eruption in 2014.

We headed back down and were served lunch under the shady trees right on the beach. There were a few other tourists also visiting on the same day but I did expect more.

After lunch we headed to the base of the original Krakatau volcano for some snorkelling. This was my favourite part. The water was clean and clear and there were quite a lot of colourful fish. We spent about an hour here before we started to head back to Carita Beach.

We managed to organise a driver to take us back to Jakarta via the boat tour guide, which was handy as we really had no idea how we were going to get home! The trip back didn’t take quite as long, only 5 hours.

This trip is something to cross of the list but next time we would definitely allow more time and head to some of the neighbouring islands for a night or 2.