Road trip with Darren Day 4

We woke up bright, early & WET this morning. Sometime in the early hours of the morning the wind & rain arrived & set in for a good part of the day. I was chased by a kind Japanese man with an umbrella when I was walking to the toilet in the rain, it was still before 6am. He waited for & walked me back to shelter afterwards. The 3 of us watched the rain fall & conversed about tsunami's & swimming in the Pacific before he had to go get ready for work. Needless to say we set of very early & accomplished quite a lot today!


I am standing at the entrance of the cave where
Kobo Daishi meditated on his pilgrimage around Shikoku on which he reached enlightenment.

The cave was right near Muroto-misaki (Muroto Cape) & as you can see the weather was not the Summer holiday we had planned. However the view was still very spectacular.

From here we kept driving along the coast & by the time we made it to the town of Aki, the rain had stopped & sun started to shine.


We stopped at a great little local museum in Aki & learnt a lot about it's history. There was a swimmer from the town who won a medal at the Melbourne Olympics . The display showed his medals, photos & even the Olympic uniform.

Not too far past Aki we came across this great viewing point & stopped to admire the roaring Pacific.

We kept on our way & eventually came to Kochi City around midday & this is where we decided to stay for the night.

The tourist information in this place was GREAT. We parked at the train station (free for the short time we were there) & wandered over to the information booth. The girl there helped us find a hotel in less than a minute & the best thing was, it was just across the road!

We checked in, freshened up & headed out on foot. We loved Kochi, it's such a pretty city. Wide footpaths, pedestrian streets & a great food court.

Our first stop was the very big & beautiful castle. We wandered all over & were given a great map & english guide before we entered. At theentrance there was a news film crew filming. We didn't take too much notice of it but we should have because later (when I was napping) Darren saw us on TV!!!



Darren wanted this photo with the Japanese flag in the background. I took about 3 photos because everytime I clicked the wind died & the flag could not be distinguished. If you look carefully on this one you can see the red circle.

In the evening we found a cool bar & played a couple of games of darts (I won) & drank some sparkling yoghurt - alcoholic of course. It was surprisingly very delicious!