The second day of Nikko was all about the natural stuff. To kick off the day, we took a bus up the windiest mountain road imaginable. I mean seriously, switchbacks are nice and all, but this was taking things to an extreme. Once at the top we trekked a short distance to Kegan Falls (pictured right). The falls are quite pretty, but also somewhat of a tourist trap. You can't walk directly to the falls, or around the base, the best you can do is cough up 530 yen to take an elevator (yes, an elevator!) 100 metres down to the large concrete viewing platform provided.
Communing with nature it was not. It was very pretty though and I managed to take a few nice shots before pushing our way through the masses of uninterested school kids back to the elevator for the reverse journey.
After this we decided that packaged tourist spots really aren't for us. So we promptly hiked up the nearest mountain to get away from it all. A fairly short hike, 1.7 km, but quite steep and thoroughly enjoyable. The view from the top was nice, but far nicer was the lack of crowds, shops or toll gates :)
After the hike back down (oddly, a lot quicker than the upward journey) we took the bus back down the insane winding road to the Nikko Botanical Gardens, which were a real delight. More forest than gardens, we walked all around and took in as many of the 2,500 different plants they had on show as we could. We even got to see another waterfall - no elevators this time.
At this point we were pretty buggered, so decided to head back to the hotel, tired but happily nature communed out. We are returning to Tokyo next, for one last day of shopping before flying home. Awwww...
No comments:
Post a Comment