Today was the day! Now we can proudly say we have seen it all 😎 ‘It’ in our case stands for the 88 temples of Shikoku island 🏯📿🎋

How did it go, the day we’ve been waiting for so long?

Overall it was a pretty slow day. I guess we felt a little lazy or ‘temple-tired’ 😴 It’s a thing! After having visited Nr. 86 and Nr. 87 it was time for our certificate (we didn’t even officially reach the end but who cares 🤭) Before the pilgrims start their final climb to the last one, temple 88, they can collect their completion certificate at a museum at the bottom of the hill. There, they had a cool 3D map of the pilgrimage and some interesting statistics 📊

Two certificates, a picture and a couple of snacks later we continued our journey. Because we have been warned last week by another pilgrim that the last climb would be very difficult, even dangerous, we decided to take the safe but longer route along the road 🚗 When we finally arrived we were lucky to catch Natsuko and two other Brazilians still! They had to run for the bus (again!) but of course Bruno managed a quick selfie with almost everybody 🤳 We learned from them that the climb wasn’t so hard after all!

Now, one might think our journey is over … but we’ve decided to come full circle ⭕️ and continue to temple 1, where it all started. So two more days of hiking and then you’re finally getting rid of us! 🥹

Maike & Bruno 👣