During the golden week holidays in Japan, we decided to take another cycling trip to Shikoku, across the interesting Awaji Island. Of course, we visited the famous Naruto Whirlpools!
+++ from Wikipedia +++
The Naruto whirlpools are tidal whirlpools in the Naruto Strait, a channel between Naruto in Tokushima and Awaji Island in Hyōgo, Japan.
The strait between Naruto and Awaji island has a width of about 1.3 km (0.81 miles). The strait is one of the connections between the Pacific Ocean and the Inland Sea, a body of water separating Honshū and Shikoku, two of the main islands of Japan. The tide moves large amounts of water into the Inland Sea twice a day and also removes large amounts of water twice a day. With a range of up to 1.7 m (5.6 ft), the tide creates a difference in the water level of up to 1.5 m (4 ft 11 in) between the Inland Sea and the Pacific. Due to the narrowness of the strait, the water rushes through the Naruto channel at a speed of about 13–15 km/h (8–9 mph) four times a day, twice flowing in and twice flowing out. During a spring tide, the speed of the water may reach 20 km/h (12 mph), creating vortices up to 20 m (66 ft) in diameter.
The current in the strait is the fastest in Japan and the fourth fastest in the world. The whirlpools can be observed from the shore on Awaji island, from tourist ships, or from the 1985 Ōnaruto Bridge spanning the strait.
This time, we took a flight to Kochi airport in Shikoku.
Unfortunately, immediately after we arrived, we had the worst weather, continuously raining heavily for 2 days… Even with Goretex rainsuit and shoes… we were soaking wet…
Besides that, we had to continuously ride uphill into the foggy mountain… (luckily, it’s May, not too cold even though we were all wet).
The only happy thing was I saw many many wild Ajisai (these trees with purple flowers hanging down) on the road side. I was so impressed. Ajisai takes long time to grow. I usually see them in the park, not wild, and not so many. They are so beautiful. (I like purple.)
Even though it was raining heavily, hubby wanted to stop by a traditional knief shop, and we bough a good knief.
Somehow, even in such bad weather & in the mountain, we still managed to find a good udon shop. It was good price & large volumn & meat udon, and tasted good!
We thought of camping, but of course impossible in the rain, and we were tired… Finally, we called several places & found one guesthouse had room for that night.
In fact, the host built a hot bath room with firewood. It was so impressive! And the hot bath was boiling hot!
Even more, next morning we had super rich homemade breakfast.
There was a traditional stove in the sitting room, so nice!
The weather finally started to become better…
Our shoes were wet. At first, we put plastic bag inside shoes to keep my feet dry. Later, we finally changed to sandals.
Found this cute cafe to take rest, had coffee & cake during rain.
We ate some wild berries on the road. They looked so good and sweet too!
We found an amazing good seafood restaurant for lunch. The restaurant was so popular. We waited for at least half an hour in line, in order to get in.
Fried Octopus, again my favorite food!
Guess what? An amazingly nice quiet free camping site. And best of all, there were nobody else except us!!!
The morning sun in the camp site was so beautiful!
Our breakfast at camp site!
Haha… since there were nobody else, we just hang everything anywhere to dry!!!
It might look peaceful, but this place had the strongest headwind ever! The wind even came with lots of sand, I had to keep looking down & be careful, or sand would get into my mouth.
It felt like a long way, because of the sandy wind… Finally arrived the port. This is the boat that would take us to see the famous Naruto whirlpools!!!
These were all I could take. The waves were crazily strong under the bridge, I had to hold on to a pole, or would be blown off the boat.
See the gallery for better photos.
Again, long way back from the port. Had to take a break at local store to hide from the killer wind. 
We were waiting for the bus, to take us to the other side of Awaji island, and we found this cute Showa-style cafe to kill time.
The owner gave us desert for free.
This is hot coffee poured into the ice-cream. It tasted good…
Finally time to take the bus.
Oh… Remote-controlled boat race is popular in this area. We just saw it live on the TV in the cafe, now we can actually see it from the bus window!
We passed by a temple, which has very very huge red front door.
This is again a public recreational facility, very good rates and nice quiet room.
I love the green onion field. Too bad we cannot bring back green onion by our bike.
A little countryside roads, up & down & narrow roads…
Oranges again! Cute character of Kumamoto.
This statue used to be owned by someone, but nobody take care now… So I read from the news that they had already destoyed it. How very sad…
We are riding toward Awaji Island!
Awaji Island is actually very quiet. Many old buildings, shops are closed. I guess because young people all moved to big cities… Only tourists come here.
Awaji Beef is famous, so we found a restaurant that served Awaji beef and rice. I did tast good!
We stayed at a guesthouse in Awaji Island. There were really nothing around except convenience stores…
The morning sun shinning on the sea is beautiful.
We took a walk along the beach in the morning.
Vacation house near the beach. Don’t you want to live here?
Found a pretty lighthouse on the beach. It has interesting stairs and beautiful bridge, although looked old.
There were very relaxing cycling roads, even had beautiful wild flowers at the road side.
We visited the Akashi Kaikyo National Park in Awaji Island. It was really large and well-maintained, bloomed with many kinds of flowers.
This is the park’s image character!
Again, some old town.
Lovely old telephone booth.
Haha… It became hot.
We had Indian curry for lunch. This restaurant’s curry tasted good, and they had many favors of nan to choose from.
Again, this time we only camped for one night, so we went to convenience store to buy tape and mailed the camping good home by courier.
Night view in Kobe town was so nice. Unfortunately, restaurants all closed by 8PM because of pandemic.
We only found this Italian restaurant along the river was still opened.
There was a festival near the port, and many food vendors, so we ate curry rice for lunch there.
Rumor said that this was the 1st stone on earth that god set foot on. Haha…
It is beautiful though.
We had to take a short-time ferry from here across the Akashi port to Kobe.
Yeah!!! We finally came to Kobe downtown. Unfortunately, we cannot take the bike to walk inside the indoor street, so we couldn’t stay for long.
The fried Octopus in Kobe (Akashi) is large & cheap. I still want to eat it again!
It was very sad that we had to hurry to ride to Kobe airport, then disassembled our bikes, then check-in. After that, we found out all the restaurants in the airport were already closed (Last order at by 7:30PM!)
So, our dinner was convenience store…
🌸NOTE🌸Since Google Map refuses to show our route by ”Cycling Mode”. In fact, we had to take a bus across the island.
Routes:
Day 1: take a flight from Haneda to Kochi Airport, stayed at Miyoshi
Day 2: stayed at Tokushima
Day 3: stayed at Awaji
Day 4: stayed at Awaji
Day 5: take a flight from Kobe back to Haneda Airport
TOTAL: about 314km
Although we had suffered heavy rain, freezing cold and hunger, I still love AWAJI ISLAND (⋈◍＞◡＜◍)。✧♡
