Camping tour 2016: Day ten (Monday 11 July)

We travelled today from Lake Biwa down to the Kii Peninsula and down its east coast. We wanted to go down the west coast but it would have added an extra hour to our journey and we didn't want another late night. It turned out to be a good move. 

The Kii Peninsula is rugged, covered in impossible forested mountains. We cruised through the mountains on an expressway first, then, when the expressway ended we drove on an ordinary 50km/hr road on the coast. But the time eventually came to go inland. The roads look like noodles on the map and they were. And just as narrow. Sometimes as narrow as just one car width and without guard rails. 

I am blessed with a tendency to get motion sick so I inevitably end up the driver for these types of roads. There are no photos of this drive! 

We set up camp in under an hour. Everyone was cooperative. We're getting good at this! Our fifth setup in ten days. Turns out our timing was good. We finished setting up at about 4.20 and found out a few minutes later that the reception building shut at 5pm and the showers in the building were therefore also shutting. So we showered then, which meant we were all in bed before 8.30 last night. Bliss!

It also began sprinkle around the time we finished setting up, which went on for a few hours. But it was really it hard to tell if it's raining because only a few meters away in a small ravine there is a stream rushing noisily over rocks. 

The campsite is right alongside the road but this is fairly remote valley. So there was mercifully almost no traffic. Additionally no lights at all. We felt like we were in the middle of nowhere, just like we did in certain camping spots in the middle of Australia a few years ago. 

The only downside for the campsite apart from the hairy drive in was the large spiders in the toilets, especially at nighttime.