I was awoken last night at 3am by the flash of lightning and the drumming of rain on the hotel window. It was raining cats and dogs. Groaning I turned over, buried my face in the pillow and prayed that the rain would exhaust itself by morning. My prayers were answered and when the new day came it was rain free, hazy with low cloud, and ridiculously hot and humid.
Our planned ride for the day would see us burn out to the west coast of Kyushu to view the iconic volcano Kaimondake, and then north along the Ibusuki Skyliner, before jumping on the freeway to bypass Kagoshima and then do a quick tour of the Krishima Onsen district.
 |
| Our route from Ibusuki (south) to Hitoyoshi (north) |
With all the haze and low cloud about, it was unlikely that we would get a good view of Kaimondake who, on a good day, is spectacular as she sits by the sea on the lower west coast of Kyushu. As expected, visibility was poor and the mountain never really showed herself. Damn.
 |
| The elusive Kaimondake shrowded in cloud. |
Having tried and failed to photograph Kaimondake, our next destination was the peace museum at Chiran, the site of a Word War 2 Tokko (Kamakaze) airbase from which sorties were flown during the battle for Okinawa late in the war. It was really interesting to see the artefacts collected there - I would really have loved to spend a few more hours here, but as it was a single hour was all we could spare.
 |
| Mitsubishi Zero at the peace museum |
After the museum we climbed back on the bikes and charged the Ibusuki Skyliner. This road was so god-damn awesome that it has immediately made my top 5 Japanese motorcycling roads of all time (and that's saying something). The curves, running north along the main ridge of the Ibusuki peninsula towards Kagoshima, swept back and forth and back and forth for kilometre upon kilometre. It had had us heeled over, wrists bent back, and eyes streaming. When we reached that last toll booth it was with a a matching set of maniacal grins. Man it was good.
 |
| Riding the Ibusuki Skyliner |
The rest of the trip to Hitoyoshi passed without anything outstanding to tell. Our path took us along route 223 which turned out to be quite a nice ride despite a bit of traffic. We had originally planned to ride up and over mount Karishima itself along the beautifully squiggly route 1. Unfortunately, the mountain started erupting just two weeks before our arrival and a two kilometre exclusion zone has been established around the whole thing. Oh well - next time.
Route 221 from Ebino to Hitiyoshi had intrigued us since our planning stages due to a set of matching corkscrews that can be seen on the map.
 |
| One of the Route 221 corkscrews |
These turned out to be amazingly engineered stretches of road the used the spur of the mountain side to climb up on to the top of the ridge itself. The road hangs onto the front of the spur, circles around and plunges into a tunnel all the while climbing up and up; finally passing over itself and out along the ridge. The process is repeated on the way down with some dizzying concentric circular bridges. While it's really just a piece of highway, it was quit exciting to ride these structures at their almost vertigo inducing heights and see the engineering that went into them.
We finally arrived at Hitoyoshi at around 5:00pm, totally exhausted and with arses very sore indeed. I've been wearing my monkey-bum pants for the last 3 days now and even with them on my rear end is getting very tender by day's end. It's nothing a good onsen won't fix :P. Having signed in we settled into our lodging - a small cabin away from the man building. The place we are staying is kind of like a family holiday park, and has a set of onsen baths, including a rotenburo for us to enjoy.
 |
| A cute cabin for the night. |
Time to get my sweaty riding gear off, go have something to eat and jump in the outdoor bath for a long hot soak.
No comments:
Post a Comment