temples of bali

These pictures are a mish mash of a couple days adventuring in central bali!  temples, waterfalls, and hiking :)

we stopped briefly at a roadside temple called the 'bat cave'.  Once we showed up the name became very literal.

the temple was in front of a giant cave with SO MANY BATS.  It was pitch black in the cave and this picture is with a flash and zoom - but it's the only pic I could get to even come close to showing all of the bats!!

another temple we visited near Ubud was the elephant cave temple.  I never figured out why it was called elephant cave.  There was a cave but I never saw an elephant!

our driver (kadek) got us here early so it was nice and quiet!

I wish we would have gotten kadek in more of our pictures!  we loved him!! so much.  every night when we'd go back to our villas- mack would ask about him and was so excited to see him again in the morning!!

all of the giant broken rocks in the bottom of this river are the pieces of a giant buddha!!

this carving was dug into the side of a dirt mound.  They must come and clear out the lines regularly.

I don't even remember where this pic was taken but I love metta's giant smile!

more fabulous kid faces at the entrance to the elephant cave (that had no elephants!).

gramps on the steps.

after the elephant cave temple- we went hiking to tegenungan waterfalls!  we trekked down SO many stairs to get to the falls- and then up a jungle path to get to the top of the falls!

this was the perfectly jungly hike for kids.  For whatever reason- none of the other tourists hiked to the top- so we had the trail and views to ourselves!  and it was only 10-15 minutes to the top and super green!

Here's the view from on top of the falls!  good thing we aren't paranoid about losing kids over the edge.

kent may have been a little nervous here!! luckily we left mack below with gramps!!

It was awesome up there!

the halfway point!

mack finally figured out where we all went!!

after the hot and strenuous hike back UP the crazy stairs- we were drenched in sweat.  have I mentioned how hot bali was?!  so, of course, we got ice cream.