Tanah Lot

Bali has may temples and the Hindu base of the religion is very strong.  There are Muslims but not as many as on the other islands.  We had a 7 am breakfast so we could be on the road by 7:30 to travel to Tanah Lot, a beautiful temple on the west coast.  I had camera trouble that day and the sun is so incredibly bright that even without sunglasses it was hard to see the settings to fix my problem.  Therefore I have good photos of the first part of the day and a lovely (NOT!!) drawing effect for the rest of the day.  

We arrived and donned our sarongs and scarves. This rule was not enforced at this temple, but we felt better being culturally correct and respectful.  This temple has several areas to walk through.  The first part (where I got good photos) was on the north side of the temple area.  Walking through the open gate is the first step.

This is Pura (temple) Batu Balong.  It is not the main temple.

View from Batu Balong south.

The gate in to the temple.  

There is one on each side of the entrance.

Here is the temple inside of the gate. And here is the view up the coast.

Of all my screwed up photos, these are ok:

Looking down on the beach from Batu Balong.

Now for some google images of what I couldn't get with my  camera.

People walk over the rocks to the temple-we can't go there although rituals are still carried out there.  

There were a lot of people that day and you can see the different religions represented by the clothes they are wearing.

Tanah Lot is claimed to be the work of the 15th-century priest Nirartha. During his travels along the south coast he saw the rock-island's beautiful setting and rested there. Some fishermen saw him, and bought him gifts. Nirartha then spent the night on the little island. Later he spoke to the fishermen and told them to build a shrine on the rock for he felt it to be a holy place to worship the Balinese sea gods.