One of the big excursions in these parts

We had heard about a day-trip that people make, to places near our city: two temples, a waterfall, and Pak Presiden Suharto's mausoleum. I started talking with a taxi driver a week ago about it, and he seemed like he was offering a good price for the trip, so on Saturday we asked him to stop by at 8am to pick us up. 

On the way out of the city, W noticed some goats hitching a ride on a motorcycle, and he was able to take this pic before the light turned green.

We had heard about the monkeys at the waterfall park, so I shouldn't have been surprised to see them. But a monkey is always surprising to me!

They sat on fences and groomed each other.

In big troops, they ran along side us as we walked the trail.

It was a pretty woodsy trail.

Here we are standing in front of the waterfall. (In case you hadn't guessed)

Sometimes on the trip we noticed moments that went against some stereotypes that many Westerners hold regarding Muslim women who wear specific articles of clothing. We wondered if she knew the meaning of the icon on her phone, or if there was something lost in translation.

This woman and her husband were on their honeymoon, as they told me when we talked for a few minutes

After looking at the waterfall, we sat down on a mat next to a portable sate stand and ate some rabbit sate with peanut sauce. The monkeys were brave in approaching. The woman who ran the sate stand used a slingshot to keep them away. She was moderately successful in convincing them to keep their distance.

Twenty sticks of sate for about $2. We shared the mat with a family visiting the area from Bandung. They were really friendly.

The monkeys were moving in...

 ...so it was time for the owner to lay down the law.

In our commitment to eco-tourism, we crossed the river on a bridge made of ropes.

Back at the car, the monkeys had staked their claim on our roof. For a minute or two it was unclear whether we would be leaving the parking lot with S or if she would decide to cede her seat to these to characters.

Back on the road, with S having having taken courage and claimed her seat, we passed a hotel that we stopped and looked around. We were particularly struck by the staircase.

A view of the swimming pool.

Back on the road, we stopped by a park with a big statue of recent vintage.

These seemed like big jackfruit to us.

The first temple we went to was at the top of a big mountain. There was loud music playing in the village, and it carried through the air strongly throughout all of the temple grounds. Before going in, we bought S a ring, and on our way out we bought W a ring. W's ring has already turned his finger green.

Often when we we visit temples here, we're asked to wear special apparel.

N wanted me to get a picture of these lichens growing on one of the wooden structures.

One of the things I liked about this temple was that it's still actively in use as a religious site.

After we got to the top of the temple, we kept climbing up the hill and came to this area, with a pool and a statue, where we took off our shoes.

After we looked around for a little while, some heavy fog rolled up the side of the mountain.

We saw a sign that pointed to another temple, so we climbed higher up.

Here it was.

On our way back through the temple complexes to the car, W pointed out this moth, with a Mona-Lisa-like smiley face on its back.

Turtles.

We got to another temple after driving a ways.

After we finished walking through the final temple, we realized our driver was eating. So we stood around under our umbrellas and S took the opportunity to make a face.

Leaving the grounds.

Our final stop was Pak Presiden Suharto's mausoleum.

At the entrance was what seemed to be a very large, polished, semi-precious stone. But I think when a semi-precious stone is this big, it attains a state of preciousness unqualified by semi-.

Early in the trip, we had stopped by a market to buy some fruit. We found some little fruits that have a watered-down taste of the mamey zapote of Mexico and the Caribbean. The people who sold them to us called them "sawo Indonesia," and I'm just learning (as I type this) that the sawo is also from Mexico and the Caribbean but grown in large quantities in Indonesia. Watered-down makes it sound like the fruits we founded weren't good. They were. Mamey zapotes are some of our absolute favorite fruits, so calling them "watered-down mamey zapotes" is a compliment. By the end of the trip, several were smashed in the plastic bag and all two kilos of them were wet, so we needed to do the hard work of eating them all as soon as we got home.