For once Sarah has relinquished control of the blog and Alan is writing it tonight. Woohoo!!! If she wishes to add anything it will be in poofy pink.
After a late night and being woken up constantly by Sarah’s deafening snoring, we were up at mid morning for a day of touring around the local mountains area. Yeah, yeah, you can go on. Maybe I wouldn’t be so tired had you not kept me up until 1.45am making me sit in the foyer with you as you watched the silly English soccer scores flick over. I’m sure you were hearing yourself snore anyway.
We walked the short distance from our hotel down to Hakone-Yumoto train station where we caught the train heading up the mountain. It was a journey of about 40 minutes, winding our way up the mountain in an old creaky 3 car train which felt and sounded like it could fall apart at any second. But we made it to Gora safely at which time we got off to continue the next part of our journey. There is only one track so at times we had to pull up into a different area so the one coming down could continue its travel.
From Gora to Sounzan was a relatively short stretch by cable car; only 6 stations, but it was amazingly steep. When we arrived at Sounzan station and walked up the platform it was an effort not to fall over that’s how steep this area is. They say it is handicap accessible but I don’t know how anyone in a wheelchair could get themselves up the platform.
From Sounzan we then boarded the ropeway (gondola) high above the countryside to Owakudani. There were a couple from Melbourne in our ropeway car and they had hired a tour guide for the day so we got to listen in while he was talking to them on the gondola. We saw the guide again about 5 hours later at Hakone-Yumoto station. He waved at us and we waved back but it took a few seconds for me to realise who he was. I’m sorry but all Japanese look the same to me. After reaching one particular peak, the terrain below changed from forest to “Hell Valley”, which is a volcanic crater. You have an amazing view from your ropeway car as there is sulphur coming out of the ground. If you didn’t know better you would think the volcano was about to erupt.
At that point you have to change ropeway cars to get onto another line, so we took the opportunity to have some lunch at one of the food places up there. Sarah had noodles. I don’t know what it was that I ordered, but by gosh it did not taste good.
After lunch we were back on the ropeway and heading downhill toward Lake Ashinoki which is 724 metres above sea level and was created by the last volcanic eruption there some 3000 years ago.
Upon arriving at the port at Lake Ashi, our pirate ship transport was already waiting for us so we boarded for the crossing from one end of the lake to the other. It was very cold outside so we spent most of the trek inside. My Fuji is clearly visible from several points along the ropeway and Lake Ashi but unfortunately for us it was completely obscured by low thick cloud today and we didn’t see it at all. Hopefully tomorrow.
Our boat docked in Hakonemachi and we then had the choice of either a 2 kilometre walk to Motohakone or to stay on the boat which takes about 7 minutes. we chose the boat and were joined on our seats by some German tourists, one of which was using a film camera. Film! Why would you bother these days? He owned a very expensive Canon EOS 5 camera with an amazing lens on it. But still, digital is the only way to go these days.
So after arriving at Motohakone the next part of our journey was by bus back to our starting point in Hakone-Yumoto. It took about 40 minutes of driving on very narrow, winding mountain roads which got a bit hairy at times but we made it back safely. Alan fell asleep on the bus but in his scary sleep pose; eyes partly open together with his mouth.
Later in the afternoon we caught the train down to Odawara where we had booked a car rental. We bought some really really yummy dinner to bring back to our room before going to the car rental place and picking up our almost brand new Nissan March (only 811 kilometres on the odometer). We very skilfully managed to find our way back to our hotel without any problems whatsoever. The big test will be tomorrow when we have to drive about an hour and a half to Fujikyu Highland amusement park. The car has a GPS. No help there though, it’s only in Japanese. The people at the hotel have given us a map and directions. Some of the staff were laughing and we are not sure why. Is it because we hired a car, is it because we only have it for one day or is it because we’ve hired a car JUST to go to an amusement park? I think it is the latter.
Trivia for the day…. Pedestrians need to be extremely careful when crossing the road here. You should never step onto a pedestrian crossing if there is a car anywhere in sight as they simply will not stop for you. We’ve been almost run down numerous times. We even had a bus drive on the wrong side of the road to get around us. There was no way he was slowing down for anyone.
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