The morning started how we liked: waking up without alarm (at 5:30 😴), having a delicious breakfast (musli, yoghurt, blueberry 🫐, kiwi 🥝) and filtered coffee with oat milk (!) ☕️. We left our beautiful accommodation at 7 on the dot.

On our first temple of the day (41) we had a delightful surprise and met our friend Natsuko (the lovely Japanese lady who we met on our first days of pilgrimage!). We walked with her (and her friend) for the rest of the day.

It was a very pleasant day, where we walked mostly through forests and beautiful passes (we learned that the word “pass” means “a route over or through mountains”). We even went through a nice path where a few years ago a typhoon 🌪️ caused a flood and made the trail impassable. Apparently this year is the first year since that part of the trail is open again. We had to go over (and under) lots of trees and branches that had been knocked over by either the tornado or flood.

Even though we haven’t visited half of the temples yet (almost there!), today we realized that we are past the half of our pilgrimage in kilometers: we have walked more than 650km so far!

PS: Natsuko is really fascinated by the way we eat carrots. Every time she sees us eating a whole carrot 🥕 she laughs and takes a picture 😂📸

Bruno 🐍