Our first temple visit was at the Elephant Temple. Hindu and Buddist monks used to meditate in the cave and it is believed to have been built around the 11th century.
We all received the traditional Hindu blessing of rice on our foreheads before heading off to the next temple called the Rock Temple, Bali's oldest monoliths. It was a healthy set of stairs on the way down, even better on the way back up when we were nice and sweaty. But the carvings and the sheer size of them were incredibly impressive.
Third in the temple visits was the Kehan temple, one of the largest in Bali:
Third in the temple visits was the Kehan temple, one of the largest in Bali:
We had lunch overlooking a beautiful green valley before heading down to Padang Bai.
We had originally wanted to book a speed boat for the following day to go from Padang Bai over to the Gili Islands, a group of 3 small islands off of the coast of Lombok, Bali's neighbor to the east. We were informed the boat was full, so we decided to have Nyoman take us around for a few more days before heading over to the Gilis. After driving around a bit, we ended up in Candi Dasa at a pretty fancy resort (for our standards these days):
Kind of an interesting story about this town - local contractors dynamited the reef years ago to use for building materials and the beach eventually washed away. The government then built really ugly cement things in order to restore the beach but were not very successful.
The result:
We suppose that's why hotels have such fancy pools?
5 comments:
These pictures are amazing. I am so jealous of all your travels. Those temples are pretty cool!
Great pictures of the temples!
So green. Awesome.
all those temples are really cool.
how sad about the destruction of the reef and beach :(
It's amazing to think that they carved those giant statues by hand. It must be amazing in person.
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