The Henro- Day 2

The rhythm is starting to set in. Wake up, pack, step out, and go. There’s something peaceful knowing your entire day has one purpose: move forward. I’ve started to enjoy how quiet it is out here. Not just noise or lack of people, but mental noise. Out here, there’s space, people just going about and living a simple life.  Although 95% of the people I see or cross paths with don’t speak English, they all smile, wave, and wish me a good day.  

(Kon’nichiwa) 

There is good energy here, kind gestures, and time to think and reflect.  And then there are the temples. A lot of temples. They’re all a little different, but I have a feeling you might get sick of temple photos before I do. Today, we went from Temple 7 to 11 and covered a little under 15 miles. 

The day started off as good as I could’ve hoped. Since we got dropped off at accommodations quite far from our route the night before, we were told someone would come pick us up and bring us back. As promised, and right on time, a van showed up and took us back. It ended up being a lovely place and super comfortable.

Just out making new friends.  I’m not sure why there’s a mannequin just sitting here in the middle of nowhere, but I was happy to visit with her for a while.  There is surprisingly very little places to sit along the way so far.  But here, you get a bench and a friend.  😁

The interesting things along the way.  I thought it was creative how they designed this mini excavator with an offset in the boom.  

At each temple, I take a moment to ask for strength and healing for my mom. I give a thanks for all I have, and wish good health and well-being of my family and friends. Beyond that, I find myself hoping for something bigger—for a little more peace in the world, and that people might find their way back to kindness.  Maybe back to a better version that we used to be.

I know… not exactly small requests.

Bridge over troubled water.  Simon, Garfunkel, and I all miss you Grandma 

This little tractor was really cool.  They load it with rice seedlings and it plants them quite quickly.  

These door ways are built for a different height bracket. I’ve hit my head more times than I’d like to admit.  So, I’m either now clumsy or Japan is politely reminding me to bow a little more.

It was nice they had a washing machine for us to use.  I pushed buttons for 15 minutes before it turned on.  I don’t have a clue what cycle it ran, but the clothes smelled better than they did so I’m calling it a win!  

Every moment here feels like a real life game of  “The legend of Zelda.”

This picture might not look confusing at first, but you get a little nervous on how to use this shower without knowing.  The entire room is a shower.  Although it’s not shown in this photo, the tubs are commonly left full of water.  It’s meant to be a place to wash yourself first, and then use the tub to soak and relax without draining it, as it’s meant to be shared.

 

Who would’ve guessed flushing a toilet could be so confusing and require such a commitment.  Gotta say though, every seat so far has been heated….so even when you push the wrong button, at least you’re comfortable while you figure out what you just started.

The Henro- 88 Temples around Shikoku Japan

​Well, I’m happy to be off on another walk and equally appreciating doing it somewhere foreign to what I’d typically see.  Initially my plan was to walk the entire Henro trail, (750 miles) but it just isn’t in the cards to complete it this year.  Between transit, weather, and maybe a couple days off I might squeeze in 4 full weeks of actual walking.  Depending on how things go, I’m hoping to at least finish half of this adventure 

On our first day of walking, we made it to Temples 1-7.  We covered a little over 14.5 miles which wasn’t bad considering we landed in Tokushima at 8:45am.  Like the Camino, following the trail is straightforward with signs and an app if you take a wrong turn.  At the time of writing, I just finished taping up a few spots on my feet where I am expecting a blister here soon.  As seen below, I met with Philip from Australia to walk the Henro.  He is a friend I made walking the Camino (Spain) a few year back.  

Japan has got to be the vending machine capital of the world. These things are everywhere and they are also proving to be very useful on this walk.  I’m unsure if this is going to be a very quiet/secluded walk, or if us starting a little late today at the beginning (Temple 1) restricted us from seeing other pilgrims.  When we were at the temples, we saw quite a few people being schlepped in and out on a bus, but almost no one out walking in-between. Maybe because it is Sunday that everything was so quiet and closed up, but our food options today was a split between vending machines or 7-eleven. 

So far the start of this walk is feeling very different to the Camino. Having a good understanding of Spanish versus a zero understanding of Japanese is adding its challenges.  I don’t feel many would understand this thought, but I get invigorated by being in an environment where it’s a challenge to do or understand anything. As everything is written in Kanji and you can’t even make an attempt at what something might say, I’m accepting that things will definitely be a little harder.  

As we were leaving temple number 7 and looking for our accommodations booked long ago, we realized that they were almost 2 kilometers away from our trail. I guess I shouldn’t complain since I committed to going for a long walk, but it was a little frustrating when we finally arrived to see a shock on the face of people (who acknowledged they had our reservation) that we actually showed up. 

After a lot of commotion and language barriers, they said they were full and didn’t have room. The other concerning aspect was, I didn’t see one lodging option before we arrived to this place as well.  As you see in the photo below of me and the lady who ran the accommodation, she drove Philip and I to a 7-Eleven and bought us dinner.  I didn’t even realize she was paying for it until it was too late.  After about another 10 minutes of driving even further, she dropped us at another place to stay.  Unlike her (small) accommodation that didn’t have any more room, there wasn’t even somebody around here to let us in. There was food in the refrigerator here, and a jar on top to leave money for what you ate.  Fortunately for us, we just came from 7-11. She then advised us she would be back at 720 am to take us back to our trail.  Let the adventures begin.

The trail sometimes doesn’t feel like I’m on the trail.  

Definitely enjoying the Japanese Gardens around the temples and in peoples yards

We were really thrilled to find this.  It had been quite a while since we had something to drink.

Blog Update #216

Welcome to my travel blog..  Unfortunately, you’ll likely be reading it backwards.  It’s posts go from recent to past.  

Before this one and a half month adventure, it had been 9 years since I had taken a bigger trip to where I traveled to Africa for 2 months.  Additionally even earlier on, it’s been 15 years since I embarked on my “Adventura Grande” around the world for one and a half years. Mostly, I felt like my blog would many times be a burden when I’m traveling as it’s surprisingly hard to find the time to update it while being on the road and I only have this little screen on a phone to work with.  At times during my posts, I really wanted to put a disclaimer stating to please excuse any errors as it was simply put together from an IPhone and most of the time while rolling down the road.  As listed in the title above, I’m surprised to reflect that I’ve now updated 216 posts to this blog and covered over 50 countries traveled.  When I started this blog, MySpace was very popular and Facebook was gaining popularity very quickly as well.  At the time of writing here in 2023, I’m probably too far out of the loop on what’s cool other than I have never jumped on the bandwagon in the world of social media much.  Everyone is always taken back when I say that I’ve never used Instagram.  Deep down, I dislike much about what social media has to offer.  It always seems like everyone is simply posting filtered depictions of what would make it seem like everyone has a perfect life full of endless fun.  I can’t imagine how much of a challenge this poses to the followers and especially the younger generations who are finding their way in this crazy world and establishing their own expectations for what to expect and how to be a part of it all.  In relating this thought to my blog, I will assure you this is not anything overly exciting containing filtered pictures portraying a dreamy lifestyle.  It is not something that I put out there to very many people that I have done a travel blog over the years as well.  I mainly use this as a way to document, reflect, share my experiences with people close to my heart, and look back on the adventures I’ve had.  Although many people over the years have expressed that what I have done is incredible to get to this many places, I like to say nothing in this blog is anything more than something that started with hard work, a goal, and an execution of said goal.  Additionally,  most of my travels have involved more moments of being uncomfortable and dirty rather than comfortable and dreamy.  If you were break this entire blog up into total money spent traveling, you might be surprised on how little I spent on average to get to these destinations.  Almost all transportation is public and accommodations are typically a dormitory option.  For a quick example, I have spent less than $50,000 on all of these trips combined taking me to over 50 countries traveling for somewhere around 625 days total.  There have been some more expensive layers that drive this number up some, but on average $50-60 per day is probably on the higher side of these figures.  

One day, sooner than we might prefer, we’re all going to realize that our time left is no longer. I’d like to assume most people have big dreams of the things they’d like to do before this moment comes.  I can assure whoever happens to actually read this message in it’s entirely, a lot of you would not enjoy many of the things I have done below. They were my dreams though and I’m grateful for the fact that I perused and lived them rather than making excuses or reasons to why it couldn’t ever be possible.  If you’ve managed to get this far, my greatest hope is that I might inspire you to act on an adventure of your own.  It really doesn’t require you to be rich or perfect.  Just a goal and a little hard work.

Buen Camino!

Seville, Spain

Seville is a beautiful city worth the stop.  When we arrived, we decided to take a tour of the city on a horse drawn carriage.  As you will see below, Graydon‘s eyes looked very puffy after only  20 minutes following a horse.  We immediately had to go to the pharmacy to find some Benadryl. 

Best thing I’ve ever been called.

If anyone would like 3000 pictures of random tile work found though-out Spain, Portugal, and Morocco, please feel free to reach out to me directly for my wife’s contact information.

Tangier, Morocco

Although we only spent 1 day in Tangier, I felt that was enough for us.  I hate to pick on Africa, but it is definitely my least favorite continent.  The gaps between the haves and the have nots are so great that you spend the majority of your time telling everyone that you’re not going to buy every souvenir that was ever made.  It was a memorable day but I still wasn’t feeling the vibe of being somewhere completely different as I sometimes thrive on. 

 

I couldn’t help but admire their creative way to support a roof and keep things dry.

Rasheed!

Camel minus his toes.

Tarifa Spain

 I had always been intrigued by how close Europe is located to Africa for some reason.  As we finished up Portugal at the very bottom and we were heading back into Spain, we decided to come to this port town to cross the straight of Gibraltar.  We passed about a thousand windmills on our drive down and it was quite easy to see Africa driving into Tarifa.  Tomorrow we are going to take the ferry into Tangier for a quick adventure around Morocco before we start our path towards Madrid for our flight home in the next few days.

Tarifa is the windsurfing capital of Europe.  These guys were amazing to watch.