hokkaido: day 4 - d'you remember catchphrase?
DEST: SOUNKYOU DIST: 112KMS
rest day in the mountains. yesterday was another long one but we managed up to our hostel in the mountains by 6.30, just as the sun was going down. the scenery was lovely - changing from lush tuscan hills in the morning to a dramatic alpine rocky gorge by the evening and we stopped in between for some scolding ramen carbs. thankfully the climb wasn't too steep either as dan's knee was causing him a fair amount of pain. the mist sitting on the river helped to take the edge off the final few kilometres and sounkyou ended up being a lot nicer than the guide books make out but then your perspective is always different when you've had a long day in the saddle. our simple bath and dinner last night was all we yearned for in the world and the woman who showed us to our family sized tatami room, an angel.
we were both relieved to take a day off, a minor discrepency when we planned this holiday, and we cable-carred it up the mountain to catch a glimpse of the view in what was a pretty cloudy day. to be fair we could only see about 100 metres at our highest point but I'll try and keep this romantic. we did befriend (in the most innocent of senses) a chipmonk which was easy but we didn't take him home.
we headed back to the village - basically one street with tat shops, an onsen and a few restaurants. so we bought some shit, had a bath and ate. actually we were too shagged to do anything else and the tonkatsu here was pretty bloody good. the obligatory local info centre had decent screenings of different seasons as well as some geology diagrams and stuffed bears - meanwhile, back at the hostel, after being on our tod last night with only a very clean dwarf for company, 500 bloody students rocked up tonight and have commandeered the lounge. bloody kids.
