Kadek, our tour guide, warned us about the monkeys at Uluwatu. He told us they are there to guard the temple and its grounds. This is a photo of one of the monkeys sitting on a wall surrounding the temple. As you can tell, the setting is beautiful --- right on the edge of some cliffs at the southern tip of the island.
We found out that the monkeys do a really good job of guarding the temple. As we were leaving the temple walking along this wall, a monkey reached out and grabbed my Mom's glasses -- right off her face. Needless to say, it frightened her and all of us quite a bit, especially because the monkey sat on the wall, bared its teeth, and hissed at my Mom as she tried to yell at the monkey to get her glasses back. I yelled for our tour guide (who was about 100 feet ahead of me) to help us out, and a couple of workers at the temple grounds heard me, and threw some fruit at the monkey to pursuade the monkey to give back the glasses. Thinking we had all learned our lesson, my Dad took his glasses of his face and carried them in his hand at his side. This didn't fool they monkeys. Another monkey grabbed my Dad's glasses right out of his hand and took them. This one hopped over the wall and, I thought, started scampering down the side of the cliff. Luckily the temple workers came to the rescue again with their fruit. It definitely made our trip to Uluwatu memorable.
