PADANG PADANG BEACH AND ULUWATU TEMPLE (02/11/09)
Another excursion, this time to the southern most point of Bali and the beautiful Padang Padang Beach. We planned to spend a couple of hours relaxing on the beach before heading onwards.
As we walked around a large rocky outcrop at the far end of the beach Liz spotted this adolescent Long-Tailed Macaque perched on a shrine. As we watched a whole troop of these charismatic monkeys emerged from the hillside undergrowth and onto the beach.
Jenny was fairly nervous of her new beach mates. Fred was nowhere to be seen.
The older Macaques were dedicatedly digging in the sand and paid us no attention whatsoever.
Not a great fan of sitting around on beaches Adam suddenly found himself in his element.
The Macaques were certainly on the beach for a reason, they kept digging in the sand and then jumping on the rocks to eat what they had found, although we could not spot what it was.
At last we spotted why they had made the trip down the hill- they were digging up, and eating, crabs while the tide was low. We were very lucky, 20 minutes after they first appeared the whole troop disappeared back up the hill.
Fred and Jenny getting a small taste of what Liz has put up with for almost a year- waiting patiently for Adam to finish taking pictures of the monkeys.
Slightly further south, about as far south as you can go on the island, is the Temple of Uluwatu, a good place, we had been told, to see the sunset. Much to Adam and Liz's delight there were also hundreds of monkeys here too.
This species of Macaque have a definite 'old man' look about them, even the females.
They are extremely intelligent animals and display suprisingly human charecteristics. This baby could be any child reluctantly having his hair checked for nits by his mum.
These monkeys have a well deserved reputation for being kleptomaniacs. We were, thankfully, forewarned by our driver to leave hats, glasses, hairbands etc. in the car. Other people, however, did not have the benefit of this advice. This one has stolen a baseball cap but we also saw them stealing lots of hair accessories and glasses. One woman was extremely upset, she was very shortsighted and a monkey got her glasses. One of the locals tried to get them back but the simian thief disappeared down the sheer cliff not to be seen again.
The sunset was certainly beautiful. Adam had said when he arrived that he wanted a picture of a Macaque silhouetted against the sunset and Liz thought perhaps he was being a little optimistic. Well here we are...
What else can be written for this other than ' the two cheekiest monkeys around'?
This monkey was very obediently posing on this post throughout the whole sunset.
We had to wear sarongs to cover our knees during our visit to the temple. Fred was so taken with his that he decided he is going to start wearing dresses when he returns to England.
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