Day 65 – Tanabe to Chikatsuyu
Today was an exhausting 7 hours of hiking on the first leg of the Kumano Kodo a.k.a Nakahechi (The Imperial Route to Kumano). The hike was around 14km. We left our accommodation Guesthouse TAKAO in Tanabe, around 7:30am and bused to the starting point of the hike, Takijiri. We left around half of our luggage in a locker at the Tanabe Railway Station so we had less weight.
These signs are useful at times.
After visiting the visitor centre and buying a take away lunch from across the road, we started the hike at 9.20am. The start of the Kumano Kodo was good and steep, but we were surrounded by trees so could not see anything. We ate lunch a couple of hours later at Takahara, which had amazing views of the surrounding mountain ranges.
Mount Meshimori-Yama Viewpoint Views from Takahara
Along the rest of the hike to Chikatsuyu, we saw the occasional animal, including crabs (at first we thought it was someone’s lunch that had escaped), owls and plenty of spiders. The was also a snake very nicely camouflaged into the dead leaves. We only saw it when we were around 1m away. Lucky for us it just slithered to the side of the path. We ran past it.
Once we had another home cooked dinner, courtesy of a small super market in the town, we chilled with the other guests, which included a German retiree and a South African TV series host and crew doing a documentary about Japan. We stayed at Minshuku Nakano, which was our first experience with a traditional Japanese guest house. Not bad in my opinion, but I feel like you don’t get much for the price.
We will be having an early night tonight as the hike will be longer tomorrow.
The Kumano Kodo is one of two UNESCO World Heritage Hikes and therefore with most things in Japan, has collectable stamps. We collected all of them on the first leg.
These stamp huts are all around the Kumano Kodo
