River trecking

On the weekend i was invited by some people in my office to go "River trecking". I didnt have much of an idea of what it was until i got there.

We all met up at 7.30am on saturday out the front of the prefectual office and pilled into about 4 cars. Then we drove for 2 hours to the northern part of Ibaraki.

When we got there the place was steaming. Not everyone had arrived so we had to wait a bit. So in the meantime we played a bit of frisbee in the parking lot.

Then it was time to go. We walked down lots of stairs beside a big pipe which was part of a hydro scheme. Then we climbed over a fence which said "no entry" in japanese (gaijins can get away with so much) and started down into the river.

This river was huge. Apparently it was part of the drinking water system which is probably why we were not supposed to be tehre. but noone seemd to care. Some guy came out of a building and yelled at us, but we ignored him.

To start with with swan in an waterfall and then started the climb up through the centre of the river towards the dam. We had to climb up and over many waterfalls, over huge rocks, through the middle of hude pools and around them.

I only had my runners to wear so one of the guys had made up some special woven rope things to tie to our feet to stop us from slipping. They actually worked for a while. but then they started to fall apart so the last few kms were pretty hard.

All in all we walked about 6 kms, which took us hours and hours cause walking 6 km in a river is like walking 30 km on land!

The beers waiting for us at the campsite were well deserved. SOme peole didnt do the trecking so they had set up all the dinner for us by the time we arrived.

We were staying at an "Auto Camp". I am not sure if the word Auto comes from automobile or automatic. We stayed in log cabins which were really cool.

We had a japanese bbq for dinner, which included lots of yaki niku and more beer. Someone had also brought lots of french wine and cheese to share. I felt bad i hadnt prepared anything but i had only found out about it the day before.

We all went to sleep pretty early cause the next day was more hiking.

Sunday's hike was supposed to be easier. No rivers, just a small mountain to climb to see the view. However, it turned a bit bad when it started to rain at the summit.

We were aabout 3 kms from the cars and saturated in cold rain from head to toe. Now i have a horrible cold which is no fun in the middle of summer

However, the whole weekend was fun and i think they do this kind of thing often. so i will get lots of chances to see different regions of ibaraki. Looking forward to it.