To continue where we left off last time -- we had just gotten off the cable car which we thought took as to Mount Misen. Oddly enough, we saw a sign that said "Mt. Misen 1.5KM ----> That way." And it pointed down this path.
Ok we thought, so we had a nice little hiking path on the mountain. But we noticed that the path started going downhill. Here's a deer that we were following along the path:
As we realized we kept going lower in elevation we started to wonder where the heck this would take us. We looked up a little bit on the path and we noticed a building on a mountain far far away. We pointed and laughed, "Ha ha... hey maybe the path goes there!!!". We thought nahhh. it can't be! That looks WAY too far.
Look REAL closely and you will see a squarish building / structure on top. (Click for a bigger picture)
After a few hundred meters, we realized instead of going downhill that we were now going uphill, and STEEPLY too. I turned around to take a picture of where we started. You can see the building with the cable cars here. Notice that it is significantly higher up because we had gone so far down hill.
From here on out it was about 700 meters of walking up various flights of stairs and ramps. I wasn't quite prepared for this because i had brought several bottles of water, a sports drink, guidebooks, camera, and my 4 lb leather jacket in my backpack ( had to take it off since it got so HOT!). I would guess I was carrying at nearly 10 lbs on my back. At this point i was too busy climbing and forgot to take pictures!
Three-quarters of the way up we found a rest stop with a temple. After catching my breath I took some more photos!
There was a deer also taking a break here!
That's Yoriko standing under the stone structure on the stairs. The entire walk was effectively this steep.
Yahooo! Here we are finally at the top of Mt. Misen. Pictured below is the structure that I took a picture of earlier.
... And then we had to walk back haha. You would think it was easy because it was all downhill.. But remember that we have to walk back up the other side. The trail is kind of like a big "U".
Back at the other side we found some photo opportunities. Me and Fu were the monkeys!
Yoriko does not like her picture taken. Can you tell? lol. We somehow coerced her to pose for this one...
We walked around a little more around the island and here's a picture of a temple we saw. It was TALL!
Now this is a funny sign. 10 min. walk. 7 if run a little... WTF?!?!?! lol.
By the time we had walked up and down Mt. Misen, we were at the end of the day. The tide had actually dropped way down and you can see now that you can actually walk up to the gateway!!!
And so ends our time at Miyajima island! That was quite a hike we took. I wish I would have known so i could have dumped off all my junk at the hotel or in a locker :D ! Oh well!
