Written by Dave

Beppu to Tenku-no-mori – Climbing towards Mt Aso (38k, 1,200m)

We’ve made it half way to Mt Aso and boy there was some steep stuff today. Nancy studied, maybe over studied, the route but no matter which Komoot option she picked, they all showed kilometres 2 to 5 being very steep. And today, Komoot did not lie. It was really steep. We had about 500 meters at 13%, followed by 2.5k at about 10%. I rode every fine inch (EFI). Nancy pushed the last little bit of the 13%. We were both puffing a storm by the top.

The climb had mix of road with paint stripping and road without. That was pretty much the story of the day. Komoot took us some real goat tracks. We even had one road that started with stripes and seemed reasonable only to turn into a goat track by the top.

At the top of the first 5k climb we had ripper downhill that took us all the way back down to the elevation we started at. There was no other option. From there it was back up to the same height and higher as we climbed all day from that point forward. Luckily, the climbs at this point stayed in the 5-6% range maximum and we managed them without issue.

We had worried we might find food out here but managed a Lawson for morning tea, then a nice farmer’s fruit stand serving delicious hot noodles right at the noon hour. We had planned on the stand being open to buy veggies to supplement our dinner but it turns out we found enough things in Beppu last night so that we didn’t have to buy and eat a large bag of hot peppers. Clearly, the stand sells what is in season right now. No cold storage here.

After lunch the grade eased more and we rolled easily on to our first camp site in Japan. The site virtually empty so it’s hard to judge how it would be if it was busy but overall it is fine. There are 3 or 4 tent areas, one with powered sites, the rest without. There is a super swish restaurant where we had afternoon tea and best of all, there is a natural hot spring onsen here.

The onsen at camp has private rooms only, no public bath so today we got to take photos and can give a little bit of the story on how these baths work. Public and private are the same, you just can’t take photos in the public ones, because obviously, there will be other naked people in them.

There is a wet wash/shower-like area where you sit naked on a little stool and wash every inch of your body. It is traditional to fill the bucket which starts on your stool with hot water and poor it directly over your head. You soap up, rinse, wash your hair and completely rinse.. Basically you need to get squeaky clean because next you’ll hop into the communal hot tub and soak as long as you want. If your bath is particularly heavy in minerals like ours was today, you can rinse off again in the shower area.

If you are in a public bath, many folks carry a small privacy towel for, well, your privates. Otherwise you are starkers the entire time. Get over it. There are co-ed baths but they are very uncommon and we’ve never used one. And if you have tattoos, well, too bad, many baths will not allow you to enter, period, even if you cover them up.  I think this is based on the fact that the yakuza (Japanese gangsters) often have tattoos. Obviously the Japanese are not following the trend in other countries where everyone seems to have a tattoo. We have no tattoos.

Oh yeah, about Mt Aso. I’m not sure where it is actually. When I get better internet I’ll do some more reading. Our camp site, the spa area and the restaurant all look out towards three large volcanic looking mountains. According to the sign here at camp, they are Mountains Kuju, Taisen and Kurotake. Aso is not mentioned. We ride over these mountains tomorrow, somehow. Neither of are sure which direction is north from here or why it seems like the sun is setting in the east. It’s probably just us.

I’m off now to see if we can make something tasty out of all the random odd bits we picked up in Beppu. High cuisine it won’t be but we got some more mountains to climb tomorrow and need the energy.