New Development Threatens Uluwatu Cave

The GreenRoom Times, not for the first time, were right on the money. In response to the news that a luxury development, dubbed O’laya Magnifique, was being built directly over the Uluwatu Cave, they posted a clip from the movie There Will Be Blood. It has oilman Daniel Plainview, played by Daniel Day-Lewis, pointing to a map and repeating the mantra, “Why don’t I own this?”

For the Bukit Peninsula and Bali as a whole, it was yet another blow to a surfing sacred site: the Uluwatu Cave. There might be no more famous, or beautiful (and sometimes terrifying) entrance and exit to wave on the planet. So the news that O’laya Magnifique had already broken ground in building a luxury development, with “the Biggest Wedding Chapel in Uluwatu,” directly above the cave, was alarming. Its tagline, “perched on Uluwatu’s breathtaking cliffs, where luxury meets serenity,” is terrifying, purely on an architectural basis, let alone on an environmental and surf heritage level. The property is linked to the Akmani Hotel Group, who run existing hotels in Jakarta and Legian.

Now, last year, we broke the news that a seawall was being built at the base of the Ulu cliffs. Funded by the Badung Regency government, the official line was that it was necessary to shore up the area around the ancient Pura Luhur Uluwatu Temple. Back then, we raised concerns that the scale and artificial nature of the solution seemed to be a massive overreach and came without community or environmental consultation. Or as Kelly Slater put it more succinctly, it was  “A shitshow.”

Since then, more than 50 local warungs, restaurants and accommodations were destroyed at Bingin. The government, which owned the beach, said none of the established dwellings had a land certificate to build and/or operate a business on the beach. However, rumours quickly circulated that a big-name investment group were looking to snap up the land to build a massive beach club.

O’laya Magnifique, though, isn’t a rumour. Images and reports reveal that heavy machinery and excavators have cleared trees and vegetation, just 50 metres above sea level, right on top of the cave, all in preparation for the next phase of construction.

As ever, the leading voice in raising the alarm has been Piter Panjaitan. The activist and one-man corruption watchdog reached out to O’laya with just a few questions. “Why is there industrial-level drilling happening on a cliff? Did they do a proper geological assessment? How is runoff being managed now that the vegetation is gone? What are the steps being taken to protect the ocean, the cliff, and the people who live nearby?”

Their response was either pure marketing guff, AI slop or, as Piter responded, “Utter Bullshit. “Our sincere commitment is to protect, preserve, and honour the natural beauty of this island throughout every stage of this journey,” was the group’s pushback. Nothing to see here, then.  

Now there’s a clue in the name. Uluwatu literally means “cliff edge”. These cliffs and the caves are limestone, known for its predisposition to collapse. Landslides have already happened in the area, including one a few clicks down the coast at Impossibles back in May 2024, after bulldozers burrowed into the limestone. The tragic 1996 Gracetown cave collapse, which killed 9 children, involved the failure of weak, porous limestone.

Yet, despite the outrage that greeted the seawall, and will no doubt fire up now online over this, the track record of Balinese insensitive hyper development in the most sensitive of areas looks set to move at pace.  

In There Will Be Blood, Daniel Plainview eventually becomes incredibly wealthy, but a profoundly isolated, alcoholic misanthrope. He disowns his son, kills his nemesis with a bowling pin and his final words are: "I’m finished."

Unfortunately for one of surfing’s sacred sites, this is far from over.