By bike in Japan: the southern islands and Mount Aso
Shikoku is famous as a place of pilgrimage. is the call island of 88 temples , a kind of Camino de Santiago to the Japanese .
It is common to see pilgrims arriving from all over the country in buses, seeking to travel a route that was once done on foot , but more and more it is being modified due to new technologies.
By the time we got to the island we were surprised by the c change of scenery, something almost tropical , much more uninhabited than the adjoining island of honsu . You have to take this into account when traveling there by bicycle, because although the distances are not enormous, the unevenness and the layout of the roads will slow you down a lot, making you have to go provisioned (because it is possible that you will spend a long time without find a place to refuel).
The beauty of the landscapes will leave you speechless
The natural beauty of this place conquered us all, but it did not make us last more than two days there, because we all longed for the moment to reach our final point: Mount Ass.
After taking a ferry to Bepu, on the island of Kyushu , we would start pedaling on an island very similar to the previous one, with heart-stopping slopes and an almost tropical landscape... Rivers, monkeys... it was like entering Jurassic Park. The problem that we would face on this volcanic island is that just two weeks before our arrival there, an earthquake had been triggered that would take the lives of fifteen people, leaving roads destroyed in its wake, cuts in trains , houses in ruins... This did not make us stop in our effort to crown Mount Aso, but it did cause us to have some problems, such as not being able to reach the top, leaving us seven kilometers from it for security reasons.
The seismic (and unstoppable) activity of Mount Aso makes it a difficult destination to climb
After this, we would take a shinkansen , or high-speed train that would take us back to tokyo . For this type of travel it is essential to get the Japan Rail Pass.
After reaching that point, we realized that our trip was over, with almost a month pedaling behind us, sleeping in the open, getting to know a totally different culture and a country that we definitely recommend to everyone. It doesn't matter if you travel with or without a bike; with a greater or lesser budget: Japan is and will continue to be a place to visit at least once in a lifetime...
The Roosters are already counting down the days to come back!
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Here ends the adventure of the Roosters