The Neurotic Temples of Gundung Lawu

We booked a day-long tour-hike for today through a lovely locally-focused, environmentally sustainable tourism company called ViaVia.  (They also run a restaurant we eat at daily.  I am not joking: our conversations usually run, 'ViaVia: lunch or dinner?'). Our path today took us to the slopes of Gundung Lawu, a mountain on the border of Central Java and East Java.  

We drove three and a half hours through cities and towns blending into rice paddies and terraced hillside slopes to get to our start: the local Hindu temple of Candi Sukuh.  I've called it a Neurotic temple, but it's actually an erotic temple: fertility imagery runs amok. 

After touring the temple's ever-increasing heights, we turned to the countryside and began our three-hour hike through the fields and forest to get to the smaller sister temple, Candi Ceto.  

We started in sun and views, having driven through the cloud cover at the start.  As we walked along fields of garlic, peppers, tea, cabbage and carrots, we found ourselves literally wandering into the mists.  Fear not!  A fantastic time was had by all.  Pics below.  

A view of terraced hillsides.

The formal entrance to Candi Sukuh.

Kacie and Nicole encounter a local farmer on our hike.

Someone lost a shoe at the top of this Gil - it was out hardest one of the day.

From the top of Candi Ceto in the clouds.  There used to be a giant 'lingnam' crowning the temple, also dedicated to fertility images.  (Look it up!)

We're heading to dinner tonight and then we have an early morning as we leave Yogya at 3 to catch a ferry to the island paradise of Karimunjawa for the next week.  No one knows yet if we'll have Internet access there - it may be a while before we can update again.  For now, this is one representative of a group that well deserves its dinner.