Miyajima (Part 3)

From the park, I found a hiking trail that went up the mountain. "Very Hard Pass"? Pshhhh, how hard could it be? (Famous last words). Anyway, it sounded like a challenge.

Ok, so it was indeed very hard... It's pretty much climbing stairs at a 45 degree angle for somewhere near 2 hours. It winded up the mountain, and seemed to go on forever. I was thoroughly exhausted by the time I got to the top, but I was victorious! It was a stunning view down though.

(See the little break in the trees in the middle, right against the water? That's where the hike began...)

I kind of copped out for the trip down. I was exhausted, the sun was starting to go down (awfully dangerous to be climbing down steep stairs), and I wasn't really sure when the last ferry back to the mainland ran, so I ended up taking the rope car thing down from near the summit. Climbing it was the hard part anyway, so I didn't feel too bad about taking the easy way back down.

There was a nice sunset as I was heading back to the ferry, so I decided to snap one more photo of the torii with the sunset in the background. The tide was up a bit by now, so it was surrounded by water this time too.

Anyway, that's all for today. Back to work for tomorrow...