Day 51: Temples 87, 88

Started out the day walking across a river plain from the ocean to these mountains where Temple 88 is located and passed by a nice henro hut.

Temple 87, Nagaoji was in a residential area. There we met Becky another ohenro-san from New Zealand and purchased some Ohagi that was made by the temple.

Back on the road, a car stopped in front of us, a sweet lady jumped out and gave us a package with a 500 yen coin as osettai.

We left the residential area and walked past a dam to the Maeyama Ohenro Koryu Salon (Museum) where we got our Henro Ambassador certificates.

Then we walked up a road by a creek and found this rice field in the middle of nowhere.

A little bit further and the climb really started. Over 250m of gain in 3/4 of a kilometer. This was the most difficult trail of the trip.

The view from the top was worth it even though I was so sweaty I felt like I had been ocean swimming, instead of climbing a mountain.

The trail down to Temple 88, Ōkuboji, was only slightly less steep. This temple also had a place to turn in your staff if didn't want to keep it. We got our certificates for going to all 88 temples here.

To celebrate we went to a nice Ryokan with and Onsen and wonderful food. The picture doesn't include the custard, rice, soup, and tempura that came later.

So we are done with the official Shikoku Pilgrimage. We are going to spend the next two days hiking back to Temple 1 to 'close the loop' and then go to Koyasan where Kobo Daishi rests in eternal meditation.

We walked 21.3km today. You can see a map of my tracks here (you may have to refresh the page after a minute to get it to show).  If you have Google Earth, it is faster to download a Google Earth file of my adventure from here.