88 Temple Shikoku Pilgrimage - Day 7

Day 7 - Friday, 2016-04-08

Matsuyama

We boarded the bus at 8:30 right after breakfast and rode an hour to reach the trailhead, including the time to buy lunch at a convenience store.

Today we visited two mountain temples, temples 44 and 46. It was a challenging hike with steep segments going through forests,  including some patches of ancient tree groves  Just a few remain in the island. The scenery was stunningly beautiful!

The weather cooperated. It was overcast in the morning and gradually cleared, but some stretches of the trail was rather muddy because of yesterday's heavy rain. My hiking shoes were supposed to be waterproof, but yesterday I found out they are not, my feet got thoroughly wet and the shoes did not dry overnight. Today  I am walking in wet shoes.

We crossed a walking henro doing the pilgrimage in reverse order, many pilgrims do this on even years, as was he:



The first 4 miles of the hike were tough, we were constantly going up and down steep mountains until we reached temple 44 (Daiho-ji):









After visiting temple 44 we took a break for lunch. On our way to the next temple we stumbled upon an old Japanese woman foraging by the side of the road. I truly wished I could speak Japanese to learn what she was doing.

After lunch we had one difficult ascent and then it turned into a beautiful hike on the ridge of the mountain range.

These tablets hanging off tree branches contain encouraging messages to pilgrims.







The easy hike along the undulating ridges continued until we started our descent to the second mountain temple (temple 45, Iwaya-ji) we are visiting today.



This is the gate to the temple to the temple grounds when coming down the mountain, note the massive, ancient cedar tree.



The other side of the gate:



Pilgrim praying:



Temple 45 bell. Oh, what a magnificent sound it made when rung!



There is a massive, almost vertical cliff on one side of the temple grounds, with caves dug out in it’s face that are used by monks for meditation.They use ropes or step ladders to reach the caves. There is a small chapel dug out deep at the base of the mountain, where I took the picture below:



More temple Jizo statues:



Temple 45, Iwaya Jizo, is for me one of the most beautiful ones that I have visited, it was definitely worth the hike to it.