We have never stayed at a Hotel AZ. It always seemed complicated to pre book as their hotels were not on any of the booking sites and you had to book online with the hotel. In the past, we didn’t find their site user friendly for people like us who don’t speak Japanese. Now, some of their hotels are on booking sites, and their site has improved as you can simply request a date and pay upon arrival. This is good as they offer accommodation that is very inexpensive with twin bed rooms, a bathroom and free breakfast. We were the only gaijins in the hotel. As we were packing up to leave. One of the chamber maids approached Barry and thanked us for staying with them.
Shopping for lunch at a grocery store, this woman came up to us and asked if the trikes were ours. We enjoyed chatting with her. We knew Leslie would like the Snoopy sweatshirt.
The ride has been going well today until I found a route on google that I thought would be a nice finish to the day. It was only about 10 km long and it took us at least 2 hours of horrendous climbing. From what we could see, nobody uses it. Yikes….I wasn’t very popular.
Indeed, we have made a difficult climb to reach this lookout. And, that is not the end of it. After a quick descent, it started again and was so challenging. We thought we would never find civilization again.
Once again, we rejoiced in being at sea level with a break in the forest. Fate had other plans for us however, as we had an even tougher climb…the payoff was the beautiful bamboo forest waiting for us during the climb.
You may wonder why we didn’t simply get off this route. Well, this route is so special that it is completely self contained. There is no way to leave it unless you backtrack to where you started. So, we carry on.
Our travels in Japan have certainly made us stronger riders. We knew we had to keep going and just kept riding. One section of about 4 km took us an hour to get through it. Now we understand why nobody uses this road. At times, the conditions were poor, but we knew that turning back would be hard as well…so we kept going.
This is something we have been hoping for. We are both exhausted and need a good tunnel to make some distance.
We had a bit of a panic as we need to check in for the campground at the Michi-no-Eki before they close at 5 pm. We have pushed ourselves to keep going through the difficult 10 km. Anyway, we arrived at the Michi at two minutes to 5. Within. 2 min we checked in and bought groceries for dinner and breakfast.
We really enjoy camping and this campground is superb. Each site is massive with a hedge providing privacy. The bonus is that the beach is beautiful. Our tent is Japanese…an Arai made by Ripen. It is so lightweight and is fast to set up.
