pura lempuyang

Tag: pura lempuyang

thousand steps beach

Posted at 11:20 am by jasminedesirees, on September 15, 2015

We were in L.A. last weekend for a birthday party and visiting some of The Boy’s family. On Sunday morning we got up early (we left Long Beach at 5:30 am, nobody knows why) and drove to Laguna to Thousand Steps Beach.

We were there for sunrise, it was pretty empty except for a few people doing yoga and some surfers and boogie boarders. I think it gets pretty busy there later on so it was nice to chill out and enjoy the quiet.

Thousand steps is a little misleading, it’s probably not even a quarter of that, so I wore my runners and brought a bottle of water, expecting a treacherous climb, but I wasn’t worried after Pura Lempuyang last year. That actually was 1,700 steps, and that was only once you were at the very top. So this wasn’t quite the workout I was expecting.

We walked down the beach to the end to watch the surfers and check out the tide pools, they are man made, with cement around them, and they are tucked away in the back corner of the beach. It’s such a great idea, I’m surprised there aren’t more around.

The whole cove around the beach is filled with the most amazing houses, it would be the best view to wake up to every day.

Before we left, we walked down to the other end of the beach to check it out, and we saw a viking, Deadpool, and some kind of princess fighting with the cops because they had slept on the beach (it was Long Beach Comic Con last weekend).

They were yelling, and I’m pretty sure the viking got arrested, but it was pretty hard to take his righteous indignation seriously when he was wearing a horned helmet and fur vest.

After the beach we grabbed breakfast at a little restaurant with a beach view in Laguna, and then headed for home. We ended up driving down the PCH instead, and added an extra 45 minutes to our drive, but it was worth it for the views, and to be by the ocean for a little bit longer.

We basically decided then and there that we don’t care where we go after Arizona, but it needs to be near the sea.

Posted in beach, California, Los Angeles, travel, USA | 2 Comments | Tagged beaches, California, hiking, pura lempuyang, thousand steps beach, tide pools

Posted at 8:00 am by jasminedesirees, on September 1, 2014

We only spent two days in Bali, even though I was completely in love with it, because we really wanted to go to Labuan Bajo to do some diving, so we had to be kind of picky about the things we were going to do.

I had seen pictures of the Pura Lempuyang temple, and it was so gorgeous I really wanted to go. I didn’t realize how far it was from Ubud, about 2 1/2 hours, but we did some other things on the way back so it wasn’t too bad. When I told the lady at our homestay where we wanted to go, she was kind of surprised, because apparently not a lot of tourists go there.

She kind of tried to talk us out of it, because it was kind of far away, and she tried to convince us to go to the top of the volcano instead, which sounded kind of amazing, but also really busy, since it’s one of those things that a lot of tourists do when they are in Bali. But she had been to Pura Lempuyang herself, and told us how gorgeous it was, so we decided to check it out.

We set out at about 5 a.m., with our driver, who was really cool and had traveled all over the world. He ended up climbing up to the top of the mountain with us, even though he didn’t have to, and along the way he told us all about the Hindu religion in Bali, what they believe, and how it’s different from Hinduism in India. It was really interesting.

The climb itself was kind of arduous. We knew going into it that it was 1700 steps to the top, but what we didn’t know was that there was actually a lot of walking and climbing of stairs before we even arrived at the 1700 stairs. I had to bribe myself with Oreos just to keep my legs moving.

It was kind of chilly out when we left, at least 4 people told us to bring jackets and wear pants, but we didn’t listen and thank goodness for that.

I was cold for about the first 15 steps, but once we really got into the climb I was so hot and sweaty that I was very glad I didn’t wear more clothing. I did bring a sarong though, since you need one to enter the temples, so bring one if you’ll be visiting, or they rent them at the bottom.

Unfortunately, it was kind of cloudy and foggy on the day that we visited, but just as we were arriving it cleared off for a few minutes so we could see the gorgeous view, including the volcano.

The views were gorgeous, and my legs were shaking so bad the next day I could barely walk, but the most memorable thing for me was the monkeys.

We were told at the bottom of the climb that the monkeys at the top were very aggressive and would bite and attack people who were climbing up, especially if they were carrying food, so we were each given a thick wooden walking stick, and given a crash course in monkey beating.