Water Temple Day

Hi! We woke up the first morning at 8am and started a "temple day". Our first stop was Karangasem Water temple in Bali. It's a place you could walk for hours...here are some pictures. 

Next up: Tirta Gangga Park

Is it a water park for swimming, aquatic garden, or both? There are huge fountains and freshwater pools with koi. Some of the pools, without koi, have little animal fountains spitting out spring water where you can swim. It was so refreshing because the steps at the last temple in the beating sun were difficult. There are also really cool stepping stones so you can "walk" across the water. 

Really fun and refeshing! This, above, is the kids pool! :) 

It's not over yet! We showed up after some driving and lunch at Temple Tista or maybe Flempuyang-Luhur? All these temples were within a few hours drive. We got there around 3pm in the afternoon. Apparently our research wasn't very good because you needed to  wear a sarong but they had them to rent for tourists. We put them on and quickly learned it is a 2 hour hike up with just over 2,000 steps. So we went with our flip flops! :) Cory and Oscar were almost dying in the heat and humidity on the way up. I loved the jungle hike! If that wasn't bad enough; the daily rain clouds started to come in. At some point, Cory asked if he was steaming or if that was just the clouds! :)

There are four temples going up the moutain and each level bring you closer to the sacred holy water at the fourth and final temple at the top. The holy water is from the inside of tall mature bamboo stalks. Here is a picture of the first temple:

You can see the rain clouds forming. The funny part, and you can see this in the picture, is the heavest clouds are forming up the mountain into the distance. Of course, thats exactly where we were headed too. You actually can't even see the mountain behind these clouds! 

We kept going up more and more stairs. The clouds started to rain and eventually thunder was heard in the distance. With each step it seemed to get colder as the rain intensified. Even the monkeys decided not to both us and take shelt in the tops of trees. Here is a picture of the second temple:

Then the steps really got steep! This kept happening until the last temple at the top.

At this point we were getting cold because of the rain. We were starting to get to the top of the mountain now.

At the very top there was the tinest "temple" with two stands of bamboo and lots of monkeys rushing in from the trees and eating all the offerings people brought before the rain storm. Oddly enough, there were only four or five other people on this excursion at this time.  Kind of hilarous for all that work. I think Cory was almost dead at this point but he was in good spirits and then we started our desent and things got warm again and everything was great! 

My favorite picture is from inside the car on the way home. We passed two people on a mororbike with ballons trailing behind and I took a picture from the window. :)