From Lake Akan back to Sapporo

 

At lake Akan we rested for a couple of days but not without hiking up a volcano beside the lake.

The hike itself was a very steep 3 hours climb. No problem going up but going down was very painfull after an hour. Painfully we found out for hiking you need for sure different muscles than fo cycling. So the next days we cycled with very sour muscles. Never mind the trip was beautiful.

It was quite steep

 Due to our sour muscles we only cycled to another lake around 30 km way but not without a climb of about 700m, hm.As a rewarda great and unexpected (for us) natural onsen appeared just on the top of the hill!

The lake Onnetoh is located on the foot of a still active volcano. 

The camp ground there was fantastic. We had our first camp fire after we left Australia. Even more we found some mushrooms and put it into our curry that night. 

Next day we cycled a bit along a dirt road and enyojed the long down hill section towards Ashoro.

 Stopping at a supermarket we ran into our friend Min from Taiwan who we met before at our warm showers host in Sapporo.

We cycled together for the rest of the day, camped in Honbetsu at a free campground and cooked curry together, Min prepared a delicious outdoor-style soup.

 

Since we were keen to see also a litte bit of the south west of Hokkaido we planed our route towards Lake Toya which led us to Shimitzu over a very busy and dangerous pass along the road 274. Truck after truck passed us on our way up. Later we found out the trucks used that road instead of the highway to avoid the fees. I do not have to talk about how you feel when you ride on a narrow road into a less illuminated tunnel in foggy conditions and trucks comming from both directions. The cyclists among you know what we are talking about :) it is a kind of adrenalin feeling. All others need to imagine ;).

Just at the top... foggy like hell

The downhill after the top was an easy ride then because we cycled somtimes faster than the trucks.

Pouring down is something which belongs to Hokkaido like sandstorms to the dessert. Luckily we managed to arrive at our destination just before it started.

The next days were pleasant riding: first cycling half a day towards the ocean, then along the sea side.

Resturant on the main road

The evenings we spent first at hotsprings and then looked for some camp spots.

After we reached Shiraoi decided to stay at a nice litle campground a few km out of the town in the woods.

First night there were only us and a motor biker.

 Second night us and more then 250 motorbiker since they had a biker meeting there. Nevertheless we learned Japanese motorbiker party in the same way as back home in Germany :).

At the second day we made a day tour to Noboribetsu which is the most famous onsen at Hokkaido.

Before we arrived there we cycled the very remote road 350 up to a perfectlly round volcano lake.

A few people only. Cycling down towards Noboribetsu the place called „Hell valley“ complete differnt picture awaited us and all by sudden tourists everywhere but the place called hell valley is really something special to see and should not only be reserved for touring cyclists:).

Friendly welcome to hell valey...

 

Our trip through Hokkaido was nearly finished when we cycled up to Lake Shikotsu. Dreaming about our trip suddenly the lake appeared in front of us.

Acctually the lake is a real highlight and it is so close to Sapporo. The light over the lake changed every minute, the volcanos around were covered in clouds for minute then for another minute clear views. Just very nice. 

 

That night we camped at the lake and relaxed with some beers cooking our last outdoor Japanese curry.

The next morining we woke up and the sun was alreay way up in the sky.

We cycled along the lake later on and enyojed it a lot as you can see in a short movie below.

The way to Sapporo was quite hilly! Luckily we had a swim in the lake and a coffee with an ice cream just before the climb which gave us a good energy for going up. 

Last bits of the road to Sapporo were okay, nice downhill and even a cycling path. We ate a ramen after tough cycling and went to Kenichi and Kasumi to meet them again.

 

 A nice surprise: also Min, our friend from Taiwan was already there. We had a lovely meal prepared by Kasumi and good talking about Hokkaido adventures. 

The next day we packed our bikes and all the gear into the boxes and bought our last original Japanese sashimi. We will miss that for sure!

Good news!

Short news because of the actual flood in Japan. We left Japan on Wednesday and are in Hongkong, no rain here and very pleasant 30 degrees C:) Stay tuned, we will soon post new stories!

Hokkaido adventure: mountains, food and onsen!

We started rather slowley after one week without cycling but soon the cycling mood came back. Cycling out of Sapporo was easy because of Kenichis route proposals for the first two days. We followed smaller streets surrounded by farm land small towns and forest.

Our first goal was Kamifurano.

The first things we learned was reading signs is quite difficult and Hokkaido is very hilly but food is available almost everywhere. Every few kilometer you can find a convenience store which sells drinks and food for reasonable prices.

And of course the vending machines with cold drinks!

We enjoyed in Kamifurano our first Onsen ( hot springs) and tried to prepare our first Okonomiyaki in a restaurant. You have to know you sit in the restaurant and get the ingredience in a bowl but not cooked. For that you get a hot plate.

Ok, if you know how to prepare it it is rather simple but we were sitting in the resaturant and learned how to cook it by checking out how other guests cooking it. At the end we managed it and it tasted very good.

The third day lead us to some hot springs in the mountains in the Nationl park.

The ride was pretty tough. We cycled about three hours up but the views payed back all the hard cycling. After a short descent we went to some natural onsen surrounded by dense mountain forest. Our pleasure lasted only for a few minutes until a storm chased us out of the hot pools.

The thunder storm lasted for about two hours with heavy rain and lightning all over the place. Waiting almost naked under a small shelter together with some other visitors and getting really cold is nothing we wnat to whish anybody.

After the storm we went back hot pools to heat up our cold body but the small river beside the onsen all by sudden got very rough and dangerous. So out of the onsen again and checking out the situation for while. At the end it was a very nice experience.

After the storm

The ride to the next town led us passing a still active volcano.

So these were our first days:) And the adventure continued in a similiar way. Everyday we had some unexpected weather conditions or meeting Japanese people inviting us for Sake, like here on a parking place called Michinoeki.

Basically our motto „Mountains, food and onsen“ fits very well to the tour here. We can say, a day without a pass or at least going 500m up the mountain is a lost day:)

Our second pass in Hokkaido led through beautiful region and the town Sounkyo with lovely waterfalls:

Up there at the pass we met some bears:

 

Anyway, from the middle of Hokkaido we went up north to the Okhock Sea, where we stayed at a very remote camp ground at one side at the lake, on the other side with the sea inbetwen us and heaps ofthe largest moscitos we have seen so far.

 

 

 

Next day we cycled along the Lake, Saroma Lake, and since this region is known for its seafood we stopped for a lunch in a fish market where you could grill your freshly cought and bought oysters and fish on your own! What a great unexpected lunch!

Warning signs all over the coast line

From Saroma lake we went to another lake and again to get there we had to cycle up Bihoro Pass. Again the views paid back all the sweat and calories burned:

And we filled up the calories just as we arrived at the pass:

The lovely like Kussharo you can see down there used to be a volcano and if you lay at the bank of the lake the water is hot, so we enjoyed the naturally heated bath a lot again. And that just a few meters away from our tent!

After this (another!) amazing experience we moved further east towards the World Heritage Region Shiretoko, unfortunately we had very bad weather there:

In order to see the famous Goko Lakes we waited for a day in a small town Utoro and the next day the sun came out for an hour or so, and we cycled 400m up the hill.

On the way back we went to the most incredible hot springs, especially, since we cycled down, we were freezing, so a 45 degrees C hot water was VERY welcome!!!

Next day again raining until midday, but in the afternoon it got better and we started our tour with 7000km on our bike PC!!

 
The road was steep and went to Shiretokotoge, Shiretoko pass with 739meters of elevations and a high chance to meet a brown bear at the road...

 

Well, if that is not a motivation to cycle up the fastest you can... ;-)

We had still time to take some pictures, amazing, the sun went out while we were at the pass!

It was still very cold up there,

so we quickly ate some delicious snacks and cycled 12km down to another great hot spring! Yeah!

Nice sun set after cloudy day

The next days we spent at the North Pacific Coastal line road, where we could observe small fishing towns, crab meat towns, salmon fishing towns...

Here some insights also from very delicious salmon lunch we had in Shibetsu (the salmon town).

Our journey went further to the most eastern point of Japan on the Nemuro peninsula. Along the road beautiful the Furano lake and again great seafood as well as japanese cranes.

The arrival at the most eastern point was not easy because of the road leading up and down all the time and the head wind.

  Next day we had a nice camping at the Pacific ocean

The Pacific is quite rough

and well known for sea weed, we were lucky to observe how people take it out from the ocean, dry it and store it. The whole towns, the whole families from the youngest to the oldest are involved!

Shrine, a kind of a temple, on a lake for fisherman

  Pacific road during a sunny day

From the place called Kusshiro, we got again into the mountains to the famous lake Akan.

Also a volcanic lake with hot springs all over the place.

 Ainu village in Akan

  We enjoy cycling in Hokkaido a lot and are happy to be here and having met so many lovely people on our way!  Many cyclists as well:)