We should probably have planned better...

The ferry to take us to Nagashima departed at 6:40, so we were up a little before then and pedaled our way to the harbor, bought the tickets, and sat back for a quick, 30 minute ferry ride. It was pretty deserted this early in the morning.

All lashed to the side and ready for the high seas!

Sunrise...well, morning anyway

Quiet is good, especially when you bring your own pillow and blanket

The ride was quite nice. Beautiful scenery as we wove through a few islands to Nagashima. Arriving at Nagashima, we saw the coast almost completely covered in trees and sand.

Approaching the port

A shrine waaay up into the mountain.

One of the side effects of a beautiful coastline was that we had to ride up in the ridges. This was a good long ways up. And down. And up. And down. Five separate times, if I counted correctly, we had to climb a small mountain, then descend. The landscape was gorgeous.

This guy greeted us at the entrance to the Nagashima Tumulus Park

Statues made out of leaves dotted the roadsides

As well as Roadside Stations, like The Potato House

It was beautiful, but exhausting. The roads were fine, but constant traffic, as there is only one way around the island. We were glad to finally reach the bridge back to the main island of Kyuushuu. We had read it was like the Shimanami Kaidou that we had ridden into Shikoku, a stunning array of bridges with whole levels dedicated to pedestrians and cyclists, so we were hoping for a more pleasant ride off of Nagashima.

Expectation, not achieved

It may be hard to see in the picture, but the walking lanes on the sides of the bridge were almost wide enough for a bike and a person. The bridge wasn't that long, probably a quarter of a mile, but we were forced to walk our bikes, trying not to bang them on the guardrail, and hope fervently that no one tried walking the other direction, because there was no room to maneuver, no way to pass, and a long way back for someone if that happened. Thankfully, no one else was dumb enough to walk across the bridge, so we made it in one go. The road on the other side was also not very bike friendly, and we looked quickly for a way off the main road, using Navi's back roads filter to find us a path. And Navi did a good job. The resulting route was definitely not on main roads.

Now, from here until we finally make it into the outskirts of Satsumasendai, our destination for the night, there are almost no pictures. Imagine, dear readers, quiet, one lane mountain roads winding their way through thick forests. Miles and miles of no cars, no people, just trees, mountains, and two Americans gasping and panting their way up a 300m mountain, then a 590m mountain. For the better part of twenty miles, we were pretty much alone. This is usually a good thing. However, as the day wore on, and we got progressively more tired, we realized that we hadn't eaten a real meal since Tuesday, had no breakfast today (the ferry store was not open), and were climbing our fifth mountain of the day, were almost out of water and had finished our stash of granola bars. Sumi was stopping every 400m or so on our last climb (which was 500m in height over the course of several miles), and we were feeling pretty awful. In our defense, we didn't expect Nagashima to be so difficult, nor for the main road to be so bad on this side, so we didn't think of packing extra water and food, outside of our usual water bottles. So, pictures were not taken, and we spent the last several miles of that route looking for any sign of a vending machine.

Finally, after cresting the mountain and working our way slowly back down the mountain (the roads were steep, littered with leaves, and winding), we emerged into what looked like the outskirts of a town, and shortly after:

Cue angelic choir music here

There was a very nice Shinto shrine across the street, sitting in the shade of the mountain, that made a perfect rest stop.

So, hydrated, but still pretty undernourished, we made decent time into Satsumasendai, checked into our hotel, Tentoku. It was really nothing to look at on the outside, and the doorways and hallways were so narrow, I barely fit through them, but the room was spacious and clean. We were the only guests in the building we stayed in, so we had all the shared facilities to ourselves. We cleaned ourselves up, then set out to the real reason we were staying in Satsumasendai. The whole purpose of our trip here. The goal, if you will, of our five mountain journey and the thought of which kept us plodding along as the day wore on:

That's right, CoCo Curry House salads and...

Vegetable and Chicken curries

Now, I'm not going to say the ONLY reason we booked a hotel here was because it had the only CoCo Curry House in a fifty mile radius. But it helped. A lot. OK, maybe it WAS the only reason we chose to stay here. Totally worth it. Especially as it was our first real meal in several days after two days of rather intense cycling. It tasted amazing.

Finally full and feeling almost normal, we waddled our way back to Tentoku for some much needed sleep.