The playful whales were back in the morning, flapping tails and fins to the pleasure of all onlookers. Folks come from around the whole area to stand at the cliffs and watch these whales. We are again incredibly lucky to be able to just sit on the balcony in comfort with our coffee and enjoy the show. Wow.
We had a day planned out but completely changed gears when we received a call from Lynn at the Lawai International Center. This is a very cool Buddhist organization that is lovingly restoring a piece of long sacred land on the south shore and is slowly but surely working to build a temple on this site. We had contacted Lynn to find out about joining a tour on our last Sunday here, but Lynn informed us that there had been interest from several parties and she was willing to hold a small private tour outside the usual days and hours. We jumped at the chance - packed our things and flew down the coast in our little Nissan rental car. We were not disappointed with the choice.
We had a beautiful time at the holy site. Neither of us is particularly religious, but if there is a religion that we can get behind it is Buddhism. We were served wonderful jasmine tea and freshly baked manju cakes, and listened to a delightful set of stories about the site. Rather than try to describe it myself, I point any interested reader to their website here: http://www.lawaicenter.org/pages/restore.html#shrine Anchor
After listening to Lynn we made our own pilgrimage walk along the path of the 88 shrines where I took a number of photos. It rained briefly but I was standing at that time under the one tree that could shelter me and the camera equipment did not get wet! There is more story to tell here, but not today. I need to get outside!
More photos of Day 4 here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hawkperson/sets/72157625734921872/
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