Day 7: Where the sun shines on the rice fields

It's already one week we are on the road, and cycling from one place to another, following the map on the handlebar, greeting pilgrims and looking for a nice hut to have lunch has become an habit. Today, after several days in the magnificent loneliness of road 55, we will get back into the busy city life of Kochi.

While we are having breakfast the other pilgrims leave the minshuku and start their walk. We first ask help to the tenant for booking our next accommodation, a minshuku in Kochi that she highly recommends, then we quickly pack or stuff and get on the road.

It doesn't take long for us to reach and overtake the walking henroes and then enjoy some kilometers of ride along the coast. As soon as we enter the city the difference in the traffic strikes us: the drivers are still polite and respectful, nevertheless we feel the lack of space and the bundle of roads and vehicles makes us quite nervous. As soon as we can we leave the main road searching for smaller and less busy paths.

We venture into an apparently infinite patchwork of houses and rice fields, water flooded and green for the recently planted rice. Kochi prefecture is well known for its climate and its large agricultural production, and it is indeed showing us its capabilities.
We stop for lunch at a rest hut built next to small shrine, which we will later recognize in one of Ingmar Beldman's footage.

Also the temples we visit offer an oasis of tranquillity, and we enjoy the peculiar spectacle of umbrella protected roses. But soon we have to enter again the city to reach the inner bay, where our last but one temple for the day, temple 31, is there for us to climb it.

It was built there after emperor Shomu was told to find a place similar to mount Godai-san in China, and gave order to search such a place. The climb to the 100 meters of the peak is all through dense trees which give few space to the view, but once we reach the top (and the park with an observation spot in it),  we have the rare possibility to follow our path for the day from an high spot.

Also here some locals are quite surprised to see two cycling henroes, and we gratefully accept their wishes for success and safe journey.
After the quick descent we dive again in the crowded city roads, looking for the ferry which will take us across the bay. We take it when the sun is start to set, and we are flooded with its shimmering reflections on the sea surface.

Shortly before reaching the minshuku we find a supermarket, where we stop to but something for dinner. Since they sell them, we also buy some roasted sweet potatoes.

Then we reach our place for the night, right in front of temple 33. We take a shower and then get under the futon. Tomorrow we will head South again.

Where we slept:

Kochi, minshuku Kochi-ya, 088 841 3074