Richard and Hellen told me about this place, in the upper Iya Valley, where you could take a funicular up to the top of a mountain, and from there have this great view of a hanging bridge made out of vines, magnificent scenery, lots of flowers, and a small mountain village populated by stuffed mannequins. Of course I didn't take any notes, but took off blindly in search of the place, trusting on my ability to make sense of pictographs.
The Iya Valley is perhaps as large as the Santa Clara Valley, and is surrounded by mountains on both sides as steep as the Santa Cruz Mountains. But to create a good mental image you need to add a thick mixed forest of pines and bamboos (the latter also develop pine-like tops, so from the distance it is difficult to tell if you are looking at a stand of pines or a stand of bamboo), and the mighty Yoshino River and its no less mighty tributaries (the tributaries being disgorged out of deep canyons).
Today being Sunday, there were lots of weekend-riders in nice looking motorbikes. I had a tank full of gasoline, and was glad to join them and just cruise up the valley looking at rice fields and small hamlets. I also saw the brilliant pink Barbie service station, where Barbie can take her pink car, to have a Ken-looking service attendant clad in pink pump pink gas into the tank. Weird.
I had gone maybe 40 km up the valley when my innocence was rewarded by a sign that directed a left turn up one of the canyons to a vine bridge. The Oboke Canyon is spectacularly deep, and you could see from the vegetation line that when the Yoshino River is in flood it rivals the Colorado. It was a fun ride too, with plenty of blind curves where you have to do your best not to tip over (that trick of sticking your knee sideways really helps to turn when you are going at speed).
Eventually I reached the Vine Bridge, but it turned out to be just a tourist trap. It is a steel cable bridge, to which some entrepreneurial locals have added a cleverly woven net of jungle vines, 1 to 2 cm thick, to create the illusion that the whole thing is supported only by the vines. No funicular, no flowers, and no mannequins. They did have a number of eating places, where I bought myself a skewer with a charbroiled fish, liberally salted.
On my way back I explored a couple more canyons, enjoying my encounters with nature, and with the oddities of this beautiful land. At one point I almost collided with a small tractor that seemed to be covered in grass. On closer inspection it turned out to be a rice planter; the farmer had stacked trays of rice shoots wherever he could make them fit, and was ready to drive into the flooded field to start dropping the little guys into the mud.
I had lunch in a roadside eatery, where lots of people were sitting at the counter, while a group of four short-order cooks were frantically serving bowls of ramen with soybean sprouts and a heavy load of meat, fried wontons, bowls of rice, etc. Naturally I ate too much and everything was delicious.
On a separate subject, I am now seriously planning the Indonesia part of my trip. Bob has put me in contact with friends he has there, one of whom, Dr. Rita, is the Director of the National Weather Bureau (which also includes the Geophysical Survey), and her secretary, Okee, helped me identify the flights that I needed to make reservations for while in the country. Another of Bob's friends, Prof. Gayatri, is a Professor at the University of Yogyakarta, and she helped me find a student, Irvan, who I will hire to be my traveling companion for the three weeks I will be there. So today I made the flight reservations for Irvan and myself for the initial leg of the trip in Sumatra. Okee is seeing what kind of support the field personnel of the National Weather Bureau can provide to us while in Sumatra. Thank you Bob and all your friends for making this part of the trip possible!
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