Written by Dave

Ibusuki to Makurazaki (Hinokami Camping Ground) – (46k, 440m)

We splurged on the hotel brekkie and boy did the Ibusuki Royal put on a show. I’m sure everyone is trying of reading about food but today was really amazing. The photo below has all the usual standards but today we had a couple notable exceptions.  The first being freshly roasted seaweed. Normally we get seaweed in little plastic packets with 5 sheets to the pack. Today I couldn’t find any at the buffet so I asked for some. The server took be over to the seaweed roaster and made me two sheets of fresh roasted Ariake seaweed. This is a special seaweed found exclusively in Kyushu. It was quite tasty.

The second treat of the day was Japanese rice porridge with wheat. The English description of this was as follows:  “Rice porridge is very digestible and will gently loosen the body during the journey. It is also low in calories and full of nutrients, So please try it.” I tried it, Nancy didn’t. I was, shall we say, working very efficiently all day – we’ll leave it at that so that our blog can keep its “G” rating.

The forecast for rain until 10AM was very accurate and we duly delayed our departure until the last allowable minute at 10AM also. We checked in early and checked out at the last minute. I figure that during my years of business travel I often checked in late (after a long flight from Sydney) and often checked out early leaving for home directly from business meeting. The point being, I have many, many hours in the “hotel hour” bank so today our milking every last second is just scratching the surface. Hotel staff were all incredibly nice and helpful. I don’t think they minded us get full value for our money at all.  They all waved nicely to us as we rode away.

The roads were wet but we didn’t put on rain gear or booties. On the uphills this felt like the right decision. On the downhills we wish we had been wearing them. This back and forth really only lasted about 5k as by then the roads were drying out and we were warm, any extra gear would have caused overheating.

We started east of Kaimonjima (or Mt Kaimon) and ended up so far west of it that we can’t really see it now. For the last two days it’s provided a clear but distant view. Today, because we were close enough for good photos, the mountain had clouds dancing around its summit all morning. We managed to sneak in a few shots but it was definitely not a blue ribbon day for volcano photos.

There was not much to stop for other than bio breaks and the odd Lawson until we had nearly reached the end of the ride in the small city of Makurazaki. We were still full from brekkie but thought we’d better eat something before heading down to the seashore where the campsite is located. We eventually settled on a bar/restaurant (izakaya) that had ok reviews. We both had the set menu, me with fish, Nancy with Chicken Nanban. I was lucky that I had the highly efficient porridge for brekkie to keep me smoothly processing all the food we ate today.

We eventually made it out to the campsite in Hinokami Park. It’s a free site with showers (100Y for 3 minutes) and toilets.  There are some grassy areas and by the time we got here it was very full – clearly a popular place.  We were looking for a small wedge of grass to plant our tent with limited luck until we went outside the main area down a path to a shrine and viewpoint. We thought we’d be in trouble but it turns out that there are lots of folks out this way, it’s just less crowded than the main lawn.

After showers and getting the tent set-up we settled into our two person camp bench and watched people going to and from the viewpoint to Tatejami Rock. Almost everyone has been Japanese and mostly all we can illicit from them is a responding “konichiwa”. One old gal decided it was time to pick up her country-person’s slack and chat with us. Her and her possie of mostly 80+ folks were super excited to hear about our trip and take what seemed like 100 photos with us. It was a hoot. Of course, they spoke no English and Nancy was once again in the middle of every conversation. They loved our tans and were quite impressed by our trip down from Osaka.

We are having 1-2-3 onigari for dinner, along with some miso soup. It’s not fancy but we’ve eaten so much food today neither of us are very hungry.  Unfortunately the weather forecast calls for a bit of rain in the middle of the night but hopefully it will be light and the weather otherwise looks fine for tomorrow.  Fingers crossed it works out that way.