Bali Day 2: Pura Tanah Lot

OMG! The traffic!!!

Of course, it could have been worse. Ray was telling us yesterday how it took some people eight hours to get from the airport into the city a few days ago. Dewa confirmed that was the case, saying that traffic had been particularly horrible due to all the people who drove to Bali for the New Year … from places like Java and Jakarta. He pointed out that the license plates on the road today mostly started with “DK” … indicating they were from Bali. Things were normalizing to the “usual bad traffic.”

Anyway, the 45-km drive from the dance venue to Beraban Kediri to visit Pura Tanah Lot took us 1.5-hours … with the traffic being stop and go most of the time.

Arriving at noon, we purchased our tickets and ran off to see this very interesting place … from afar since only the Hindu are allowed to enter the temple itself. Dewa said that we had 20 minutes to see what we could see. It took us half that time to walk through the market to get to the temple gates. So, we extended our self-imposed 2:00p deadline to return to the ship by an hour to make the trip out to Tanah Lot worthwhile.

Tanah Lot literally means “Land in the Sea.” It refers to a rock formation just offshore … to which people can walk during low tide. This is one of seven sea temples, each within sight of the other … lining the Balinese coast like a necklace. With the incoming tide crashing ashore, it made for a very scenic photo op, though that same tide did preclude walking out for a closer look-see.

The genesis of the temple is said to go back to the 16th century when Dang Hyannis Nirartha, a Hindu traveler and religious figure in Bali, stopped to rest at the rock-island. Later, talking to fishermen who brought him gifts, he suggested that the place would make a nice place for a shrine as he felt this was a holy place. The rest is history. The main deity worshipped here is the sea god. And it is said that the temple is protected by venomous sea snakes.

As expected, the return trip was slow going, but Dewa got us back to the ship with an hour to spare until the all aboard at 3:30p. We did miss out on lunch ashore unfortunately. Next time!

Back to Australia we go now … for the rest of the cruise.Read more