Day 5: When we reach the ocean

Today the rising sun took care of waking us up, and while preparing our panniers we hear the departures of all the other henroes. We take our breakfast and then reserve our lodging for the night.

Once we leave our first visit is at temple 19, where we ask for directions to a young boy on his way to school with a girl. Being able to answer our questions in English makes him visibly proud, and gives us a smile.

The visit to the temple puts us in the right mood for the day, and we start cycling through rice fields to pass a mountain range and then we continue following upstream the Katsuura and Naka rivers. The place is quite remote, and we even stop in small village where the facilities for the henroes are located in a dismissed school.

Being there during the day and comparing the quiet and silence of the moment with the laughter and kids' voices that there should have been long time ago gives a strange sense of desolation; I am pretty sure that being there at night, or even spending the night there, must be quite an experience, though I am not sure it is even allowed.

Our first leg ends in a small town where we take the rope-way bringing us up to temple 21. The view from up there is simply stunning and we are able to also get a glimpse of some late blooming sakura.

Once we get back to our bikes we travel along road 195. going up and down as the road follows the slope of the mountains, until we get close to temple 22. The now familiar fragrance of the freshly cut inoki, coming from a sawmill built along the road, recalls the refreshing memories of the ofuro we have recently enjoyed.

The kind staff at temple 22 suggests us a different way to reach back road 55, and when we find a suitable place, a rest hut built below some trees, we stop for having our lunch, as usual made of tuna onigiri, sandwiches and jelly fruit. Looking at the map we see we have two options: the first is to continue on road 55, which goes through mountains and valleys, while the second is to take a detour along the coast and rejoin road 55 later.

We choose the second option, forgetting that here in Shikoku "along the coast" doesn't necessarily mean "flat". And indeed we have to climb and descend quite a lot, with the partial compensation of amazing views. Not mentioning the emotion and rewarding feeling that we get when we finally reach the ocean after days of ride through the mountains.

Before reaching temple 23 we take a short break at Tainohama beach, where sea turtles come for thousands years to lay their eggs in the candid sand. This beach is also vividly described in a passage of "Scissors Cut Paper Wrap Stone", and I cannot avoid repeating in my mind the section I have read countless times.

When we finally reach temple 23 we realize it is getting pretty late: we still have about 40 km to go, and the sun is about to set. We give a call to the minshuku to let them know that we will be late, and start running along the almost deserted road 55. When it gets dark there are only our headlights shining in the dark while we rise and descend following the road, and the frequent tunnels just help us to better realize we are moving forward.

I am pretty sure that if we had the time and leisure to stop and look up in the sky we would get a flabbergasting view, but there is no time to idle. We quickly stop to the last convenience store in a small village few kilometers before our lodging, with the intention to buy something for our dinner. There we meet also the tenant of the minshuku, who has come along the way to check that we are ok.

We apologize with him for the inconvenience we caused and, after receiving from him the instructions on how to find it, we rush to his place. We exchange some pleasantries with the tenant about his minshuku: it looks quite off standard for an henro accommodation, and indeed is also used as lodging for surfers coming to ride the waves at the close by beach. Also this time we soak our tiredness into an ofuro, and we barely have the energies to finish our dinner before falling asleep. Today has been our longest travel so far, and probably the two hours spent on the rope-way have had their fair share on the delay we have had.

Where we slept:
Kannoura, minshuku Ikumi, 0887 24 3838