Road Trip - Day 3

In order to avoid sleeping at a karaoke again, our strategy was to phone up the tourist information to find phone numbers of campsites. So on Friday Reinout phoned the Matsuyama tourist information and we were directed to a campsite in 伊予市/Iyo, 40 minutes away from Matsuyama. By the time we had a not-so-nice hot bath at Dogo onsen and eaten dinner, it was already 2200. So we had to find the campsite in the dark. We were driving along the coast, and then made a sharp left turn and went uphill. The road was windy and we got slightly lost...all we knew the campsite was inside a park.

Anyway, we found the campsite, composed of gravel - this marked our first encounter with gravel... as you might expect it wasn't particularly comfortable. Seb chose to sleep in the car; the guys were in one tent and the girls in the other. Still, the gravel was actually more comfortable than the sofas at Shidax. It got a little cold at around 0300/0400 though, but when we got up the next morning, what we saw outside the tents, was simply breath-taking.

When we were driving at night we knew we were close to the coast, but had no idea what it looked like 'cause it was dark. The next morning when we got out of the tents, I had never seen such an amazing view first thing in the morning! It was a panoramic view of the 瀬戸内海 (Seto inland sea). Just blue and blue and blue everywhere.

Fresh air, green trees, clear blue sky and a deep blue sea - all that was what we saw whilst brushing our teeth!



After a nice late breakfast at a road-side Starbucks (with a drive-thru!), we headed to 松山城 (Matsuyama Castle). Matsuyama, being the location in which Natsume Soseki's (夏目漱石) novel Botchan (『坊ちゃん』） is set, there was a lot of Botchan-related stuff on the way to the castle. There's a Botchan tram/streetcar running in the city; and we happened upon the seven main characters of the novel:



Instead of hiking up to the castle, which is at the top of the hill, we decided to make use of the chair lifts. Andrew and Morgan had been on it and just as their recommendation, the chair lift was really fun and gave us an amazing view of the city.

Matsuyama Castle is smaller than Himeji Castle, but it's still very impressive because of its wooden construction and how everything is virtually the same as ever. Near the entrance there was a taiko drum, with which Andrew and Daan had fun playing.



As we were leaving the castle tower, I spotted a little Japanese kid (maybe about 3-4 years old?), who was walking in front of us with his grandparents. His hair was wavy and long(ish), reminded me greatly of Daan's hair. To us, that Japanese boy is Daan's illegitimate son :P

After a late lunch we left Ehime prefecture and drove to Kochi prefecture (高知県). The road in the mountains was windy but it wasn't so challenging (especially when compared to those we came across in Tokushima prefecture). On the way we saw some beautiful valleys, with a turquoise-green river running through. At one point we couldn't help but park the car on the side of the road, and took photos with the river as a backdrop. And then we took some photos in front of the car, to mark our road trip -



This photo is a homage to the one we took in front of the coach in Wakayama. We're standing in the same order, plus Larisa in the front.

Similar to what we did in Matsuyama, we phoned the tourist information in Kochi and was directed to a campsite 45 minutes away from Kochi. It looked pretty good on the car navigation system (the ka-nabi/カーナビ, which we have come to hate during this road trip for its inaccuracy and tendency of telling us to drive into trees/the sea/buildings etc.); the campsite is located on a river bank, which looked green on the screen. Well, guess what, it was not green, at all. We took a sharp left turn on the road and went down a slope - onto a massive land of gravel.

We were hesitant at first, at whether this was a campsite or not. But then we saw other motorists camping there (some with motorbikes and a group with a four-wheel) so we got it right. Well, almost right. Our car wasn't a four-wheel, and the body was quite low, and there were seven adults (4 guys and 3 girls) plus our luggage on board. So when we were driving on the gravel, very soon the two front wheels got stuck in the gravel.

At first we thought, "haha this is quite amusing". Then we realised it wasn't. We tried to push the car as Seb reversed it, but the sounds were simply horrifying. There was simply too much gravel stuck underneath the car. We had thought about calling AA (or the Japanese equivalent) or the police, but then it was a Saturday evening during Golden Week, it's unlikely that we would get any help soon. The sun had just set so it was getting darker and darker, and we were stuck in the middle of nowhere. Had no idea where to eat or shower...

So our solution was, dig - dig out the gravel underneath the car. We realised that digging around the two wheels wasn't enough, 'cause there was gravel stuck between the wheels underneath the car. So Morgan, who happens to have the smallest constitution among the seven of us, volunteered to crawl underneath the car and dig out as much gravel as she could.

It worked! We managed to dig out enough gravel, after 90 minutes, and pushed the car back as Seb reversed it. It was so joyous, the moment the car moved, we yelled "YES!" and hugged each other. As Seb drove the car backwards towards the solid ground of the road, we realised we've created a crater in the gravel.

We were all sweaty and dusty from the road works. So as soon as we got out of the campsite, we searched for a 温泉旅館 (ryokan with onsen) on the car-navi, which was useful for once. The hotel we went to was really nice and although cost us 700 each for a bath, it worth the money, especially after all the hard work we had put in! And the bath was much much better than Dogo onsen. It was about 2300 when we finished bathing, so we drove to a Cafeガスト (a 24-hour "family restaurant" chain) nearby and filled our stomachs.

After a very very late supper, we drove back to the campsite. Yes it did cross our minds "what if the car gets stuck again", but this time we were more sensible, and decided to park the car closer to the road and away from the looser gravel.