26 March 2025 - Day 24 - Back from the Cape - 23 km

Breakfast was excellent, with an extra onigiri and selfmade bag as Ossetai, and then there was a very warm goodbye with pictures taken by my hosts. Thank you for your warmheartedness!

What I didn’t have on my radar was the 1057 m tunnel I needed to cross right at the beginning of my walking day, all on my own this time. Luckily the sidewalk was almost 2 meters wide, so I put on my red light, started to sing “Roxanne” (thanks to Dani & Arm) and walked the tunnel. There were so few cars passing it that partially the only sound was the clicking of my kongozue on the sidewalk!

For the rest, the road along the other side of the cape was nice, with lots of views on the ocean. And then, in a small fishing village where the Henro Helper App showed a public toilet, I received a different kind of Ossetai. I couldn’t find said toilet and a man whom I had greeted just before saw that I was looking lost so he turned around and hurried back to me to show me the way direction Temple 39. I thanked him but tried to explain that I was looking for a toilet that has been marked around the spot we were standing on. When he understood my problem he just opened the front door to the private house we were standing in front of and showed me the way to the toilet. As you can imagine, I was more than surprised but was happy for this unexpected solution!

A few villages later I fell in love! I fell in love with this pretty fishing village Tosa-Shimizu that is constructed around a big natural harbour and there seem to be more small fishing boats attached to the quais of this huge harbour than there are cars on the streets here. I couldn’t take my eyes of these boats, the harbour and this one big rock covered in trees, which in their turn were covered with herons on the one side and cormorants on the other side. It was hard to let go and move on.

As I returned back to my accommodation from two nights before, I passed the beautiful Oki Beach again. There was time, good warm weather so I left my backpack in a Henro Hut, took off my shoes and strolled on the beach and through the water for some time, watching some surfers trying to get the best waves. The water temperature was perfect but the sand was so hot I almost burned my feet walking back to my stuff.

On the very last part of the road I took some more pictures of flowers and here comes an old man with an electric wheelchair. I greet him and he immediately tells me he’s giving me a buntan as ossetai and searches in his small bag in the front part of his wheelchair. Thank you so much dear old man for your second buntan in two days. They were both delicious!!

At the inn I found Marjorie again so we had dinner together, an excellent one, no surprise there. Tomorrow I will continue my walk towards Temple 39 which I should reach on Friday. Also tomorrow, there will be a lot of rain so walking won’t be fun. But hopefully this will help put out the bushfires that have been burning on Shikoku for several days.

I will keep you posted. As always, a big thank you for reading my stuff and for each and every message you send, whichever way. It means a lot to me!