Kuju Mountains

 

The next day, we hiked to our next location... a small inn/Ryokan located in the middle of Kuju mountians. You really HAVE to hike there, about 5 km, to an elevation of 1303m over sealevel. So it was a big adventure.

 

From time to time it rained, but it was nice and cool and we did not mind at all...

There you see our goal. It was actually a former training-place for buddhistic monks who lived in the mountains about 500 years ago.

After we arrived, we enjoyed the hot spa there and slept very deeply, because it was cool and quiet at night.

 

The next day, we wanted to climb up on Daisen-san, the second hightest mountain in Kyushu.

 

The climb WAS tough... it took about 4 hours to reach the top...

 

and up there was fog, but we were happy that we made it.

 

On our way down, the weather got better and you can see how far we hiked... down in the valley, there is the inn, where we started.

And here is a photo from our way back, when we reached the valley again... Yes, we REALLY were up there... we could not believe it ourselves...

 

The next day we hiked back to our car at the other side of the mountains. This time we took another route down over a still active volcanic mountain with lots of steam and sulfur-smell in the air.

We had to hike all the way down there to reach civilisation again.

The sight was breathtaking !!!

On our way back, we found lactarius Volemus... (Reizger in German). When you touch it, white milk comes out and it has a smell/taste of haring. I LOVE this mushroom and I took some of them with me.

Back home again, we fried them and relaxed from our last hiking trips.

Aso and Kuju are only about 200km away from our home, so I hope we can go there again someday soon. Spring and Autumn must be wonderful there, too... and I'd love to see some matsuri (festivals) there, someday too.

Now I'm back catching up with e-mails, letters, painting, etc...