Day 6 – September 26 – Muroto to Kochi – To the cape and along the breakwater (103k, 480m)

Written by Dave

I woke up at 5AM, just in time to see the sky start getting light from our beach front window. It took probably another 30 minutes for the sun to actually come up, most of the time Nancy was asking me if I was really getting up. Eventually I got the sunrise photo and Nancy gave up trying to convince me that it was too early to be up. I think the photo was worth it.

As planned, our inn keeper made us a wonderful traditional Japanese brekkie – not quite as many different items as last night’s dinner but more than enough to both entertain and get us fueled for the road. Neither of us was game to try the natto. Fool me once…

We had 16k to ride to finally reach Cape Muroto. The road was a repeat of yesterday – right along the coast with lots of nice views. As we neared the cape there were a couple shrines to distract us as well. I’d have to say that other than the first 20k, the 130k from Tokushima to the cape was one of the best roads we’ve ridden – if the rest of Japan is that nice, well, we’re in for a great ride. Bikes aren’t allowed on the last 100m to the actual cape but you can still get a nice view from the car park.

From the cape we turned about a 180 degrees heading northwest and towards Kochi. Kochi is the largest city on Shikoku Island and we feared that traffic would build from the cape. It did, but not nearly as bad as we had anticipated. To be fair, credit for this is mostly down to us using the Komoot bike touring routing option and our new wahoo GPS. The first 40k was mostly right along the coast similar to what we saw on the other side of the cape. After that, the last 45k we religiously followed the wahoo as it took us down a bunch of back roads and along the Kochi city cycle path. Almost every section we took had some sort of tricky entry or exit that we would have never found on our own. We crossed a couple busy streets/roads that for sure we would have been on without the routing – they did not look fun.

We stopped for morning tea at the whale museum about 30k down the coast. We didn’t go in the museum but marveled at all the fresh veggies they were selling at the attached michinoeki. With all the choices, naturally we chose sea salt and butter donuts for our snack. They are a local specialty and heck, you can get a carrot anywhere.

Lunch was taken at Lawson – one of the big three convenience stores. We were looking for local ramen shop, having no luck, then remembered that a convenience store in Japan is so different than what we are used to that it is “ok” to eat there. Yes we tried there pork ramen, and yes, it was quite tasty.

Other than giving props to the mapping tools, we should also give props to Kochi for their bike lanes. Other than a few places where there was construction we had many k’s of smooth paths – through forests in some places and on top of the sea walls in other places. Most was off away from traffic. It’s easy to feel smug when you are riding above the road, on the sea wall taking the views while traffic is down along the other side of the wall looking at concrete.

We leave the coast tomorrow so today I snapped a couple shots of Japan’s tsunami awareness infrastructure. From Tokushima until today, there are “meters above sea level” signs along the highway. Mostly they read in the single digits – you always know where you stand. Then there are the big stairways to tsunami safe platforms. Some of the platforms were in the neighborhoods of old homes. Boy, it would be sad to be up there and watch a big wave come through and wipe things out. But I guess that’s better than being down there when it happens.

We had a small amount of city riding and lots of GPS checks to find our guest house – Lululu Guest House. It’s not fancy but sufficient and we are only here for one night. Kochi is known for skipjack tuna, or katsuo – a local delicacy from offshore where “quality” seawater is supposed to make the fish meat extremely juicy and slightly sweet. There’s a famous market that you are supposed to visit to try it out but after our long day in the sun we couldn’t work up the energy for the trek to the market. We opted for a small family restaurant across the street and of course, they had skipjack as well. It was pretty much as billed – quite tasty and very different to the tuna sashimi we’ve had in the past. We both agreed however, that the machi ice cream we had for dessert was even a bigger highlight.

Tomorrow we head up into the hills and to an onsen about half-way across Shikoku. We’ve pick a goat track highway with some tunnels. Most of which we’ve also mapped “old roads” around the tunnel. If any of them look too bad/dark/long we’ll take the old roads. We have a shorter day but there is some climbing – we (ok, maybe just me) are looking forward to cycling up into the mountains.