As you turn years old, You learn that happiness does not reside so much to enjoy the days with wind for. It is much harder to be happy in adversity, But after much more comforting. I was thinking about something like that as I walked my first steps for the Kumano Kodo, The millenary spiritual path of Japan that joins three sacred temples in the mountains of the Kii Peninsula. And that's why, perhaps, He rose the hard initial repeches in the gloom of the forest with a metaphorical smile inside me, That which only appears when you know you have reached the finish line.
I had to go to Japan since I discovered in a magazine the ancestral magic of Kumano Kodo. Every trip has an eagerness, And mine was not Tokyo, Kyoto, Not even the overwhelming stalking of history in Hiroshima or the spell of its nearby floating torii. The Kumano Kodo had to walk, The only pilgrimage route, Next to the Camino de Santiago, recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage.
It is much harder to be happy in adversity, But after much more comforting
A few years ago, already with the thorough route, The Covid pandemia crossed my way and that trip, like many other, He stayed on paper at the last moment. But in the midst of that discouragement and dejection that always causes to see a dream vanished, I found a redness of happiness. Then I had the certainty that the Kumano Kodo would travel. We had to wait three more years. But that was.
The previous night we had arrived by train from Oza '-tanab, The coastal town that is the starting point for the classic route that links the three sacred monasteries through the old imperial road. There, Under a fine rain, We approached the temple in which the pilgrims implored the protection of their deities for the long road they were about to begin. Blessed by that spiritual halo, We went down to the beach and toured the Ogigahama Park -Festoneado of anti -tesunami gates and evacuation signs, And where the syncopada live music from a local DJ- Until a distant spur.
An old lone fisherman throws his cane and waits. A word of Japanese does not know a word of English, But we talked, Because so it has been since two human beings are and are interested in each other. And like any fisherman in any corner of the planet, boast your catches. The world shrinks. We are not as different as we think or how they want to make us believe. He teaches us photos on his mobile while twilight light stops us in a postcard. We are already part of the images of his sunexs of lone fisherman that continues to show us. Life.
Before entering the mountains, Pilgrims used to purify themselves with sea water very close to here, On Dedachihama beach, A rite known as Shiogori. This is stated in newspapers of illustrious travelers since the seventh century, Like the poet Fujiwara no Teika, who in the year 1201 He fulfilled the ritual by strict indication of his spiritual guide. Eight hundred years later, A source on the promenade simplifies to meet the tradition, provided that the purification rite is carried out, And with that intention we face it, with "open heart and pure mind".
Pilgrims used to purify themselves with sea water very close to here, On Dedachihama beach, A rite known as Shiogori
At this time of dusk, Kii-tanabe is a desert town of closed shops. Not, fortunately, The Family Mark, A blessing for Ralo pocket tourist, because the supermarket allows to collect breakfast and lunches at reasonable prices. And, in this case, It also sells mountain material that can get more than one pilgrim out of trouble.
The intention completed, The old Aji-Koji neighborhood and its winding alleys full of Izakayas awaits us, Japanese traditional taverns. Many are closed and we opted for Shinbe, where in the same bar we have dinner an exceptional tempura before trying to sleep a few hours on our futons in a modest guest-house bathroom shared next to the train station.
The silence of forests
Today is Sunday and the alarm sounds at 5:30. No foul. I have not slept just from the 2:19 (An insomne ??never forgot the exact time when the dream breaks). The emotion before the special moments has that inevitable small print.
The bus stop 95, that leads to Takijiri-oji, Start of Kumano Kodo, It is very close, In the same railway station. There is also the information center, now closed, And where yesterday we picked up the card where the stamps are stamped along the route. It's seven in the morning. We're alone. No loss: in soil, At the stop, A poster for clueless: «Hongu Taisha-mae (Visual)».
The bus is empty. You have to pay 1.100 yen by adult and 550 The minors, that are introduced into a machine with a small funnel next to the driver. In half an hour we arrive at Takijiri-oji. Nobody else has climbed all over the journey. The stop is next to a bridge over the Tonda River (Knarter-raose, also purification place) that you have to cross. Across, The Visitors Center, also closed, and a small trade of rudimentary souvenirs and tools for the road. A few meters, The forest engulfed everything. A torii marks the beginning of the Nakahechi route. Our goal is to arrive in two days on foot to the first monastery, Kumano Hongu Taisha, and From there navigating the Kumano river in a traditional barge, as the ancient emperors and the Japanese nobility did, until the second, Humano Hayatama Taisha, To approach the third, Kumano Nachi Taisha, by bus. Three nights ahead before completing our goal and leaving the Kii Peninsula for Osaka.
On this first day we must make night in Nonaka, where they separate us 16 and a half kilometers and 1.205 vertical meters. This forest of silence only listens to our solo while we ascend between the trees, First for a pronounced slope (relieved by trunks perpendicular to the path as steps) and then for a succession of subitas, Even Takahara's rest area, With a nice viewpoint of the mountains of Kii. At this point, and many others along the route, There are machines to buy drinks, which allows not having to load in the backpack with liters and liters of water.
This forest of silence only listens to our solo while we ascend between the trees
Although we barely agree with other travelers, The road is very well marked, With a numbered post each 500 meters (33 In this first stage and 75 Until the monastery of Mongu), In addition to the wooden booths with the stamps that prove the pilgrimage on foot. At noon we have already reached the post 22 And we rest for a few minutes in Gyuba-Doji, A trade next to the road that forces to descend from the path a few meters that will later have to upload. The march reprimanded, And already halfway, The question of whether we have left a seal without stamping (that is actually above) It makes us lose a few minutes when returning to the rest area.
The walk, Despite moisture and more than a thousand meters of unevenness, It is a sublime experience to the extent that you know part of an millenary tradition that encloses the ancestral soul of Japan, one of those countries that must be visited because it does not resemble any other (Beyond its landscapes and monuments, especially for its people). All the way, course, We did not see a single role in the ground or anyone shouted the tranquility of the forest. Not to be for our clothing, I would say we toured a landscape of another time in the middle of a stillness that left you alone with your thoughts, those that normally drowns the routine noise.
But not everything was forest. From the point 26 A stretch of road tracing a small town made us curse the sun until we took refuge to eat something in the shadow next to a modest sanctuary. The close asphalt tongue -without a single car- It followed later while tired, Tsugizakura-oji, In the Nonaka area, that we reach at half past two in the afternoon (Although the forecast of the guide was 8-9 Walk hours, We complete the tour in 6 hours 45 minutes).
A high chef in the mountains
Missing half an hour so that we can enter our accommodation, Minshuku Tsugizakura, that he rules with his wife a prestigious chef that one day fed up with the big city and decided to put his life in pause in the remote mountains of Kii (The old dream of any urban). You barely have three rooms and you have to book with time (We did it months earlier through the official Kumano Kodo website). Not cheap, go ahead (It was much expensive night on our journey through Japan, partly because of the shortage of accommodation in the area) But the reward is one of those that makes you forget the money paid.
Our accommodation, Minshuku Tsugizakura, that a prestigious chef runs with his wife who one day fed up with the big city
We kill that half an hour visiting the nearby hot springs in a cave and, Once accommodated, We parade one after another for the onsen (Bathroom Bathroom) To recover from the day. The only guests apart from us are an Australian couple (If I have learned something on my trips, in any corner of the planet, unknown, You will find an Australian). He wants to talk and as soon as I go on the porch with a beer (They are taken from the fridge and are paid by leaving the accommodation according to which you claim to have consumed, An irrefutable proof of the infinite confidence of Japanese in the goodness of the human being), sit next to me.
While we drink two bottles of half a liter of beer, He speaks to me with enthusiasm of his country -a destination always pending waiting for his pocket to accompany- and from the northern lands, Your favorite area, Creek tennant, Alice Springs, Darwin's coast. "You have to go", I hear repeat the same words that so many times lead you to the other side of the world.
Dinner is served at six and is simply spectacular while unexpected in such a place. The succession of eight refined dishes and Japanese parsimony keeps us hour and a half chewing. A feast for the senses. End, The chef comes out among our applause. Musita unintelligible words in English that our faces of satisfaction and thanks have no need to understand.
At half past nine we are already trying to sleep about futon. nothing is heard. «Absolute tranquility. The crickets only speak », I write down in my notes.
Yunomine Onsen: Blessed waters
Continue sleeping beyond four in the morning I find it impossible. We have breakfast before seven. Another deployment of culinary refinement of our host. Australians are in a hurry and leave half breakfast, of which of course we realize because we have 20,6 Route kilometers and 820 vertical meters, another eight or nine hours of walking. At 7:30 We say goodbye to this unforgettable place and return to the path, Now splashed with warnings about the presence of bears. Between trunks of cedars hanging from infinity as brushstrokes of El Greco, still splashed by the dew of the morning, We arrive at a detour from the original route, devastated by a tsunami in Wagami-Oji a few years ago, which forces to ascend the collado detaur saving a hard refraction of inevitable sweats. Without leaving this leafy forest that engulfs everything, Also any anguish or daily concern, three hours after starting the march we first see someone. Its, how not, the "aussies" couple that preceded us, to those we leave behind as soon as the path again emphasizes this vertical world of infinite beams.
We still have to wait two more hours to find the first beverage machine (between one hundred and 140 yuan each) In a rest area where, surprisingly, There are no bins, which forces to load with empty containers. Later, I take a water pipe to give me a cat shower and soak the shirt. Although heat is not excessive, except in the scarce open road sections, The humidity does. Already in the final stretch, We cross a small abandoned village in the years 70, And we arrive at the Monastery of Mushu at two in the afternoon, After six and a half hours walking through the mountains of Kii. We have barely encountered five people.
We visited the sanctuary, where a solemn ceremony is being held, and the largest torii in Japan, In a nearby field where the serious sound of ceremonial drums resonates. There is little to do here, except replenishing strength with a bit of sushi and some beers before getting on the bus that in just half an hour takes us to Yunomine Onsen, Epicenter of thermal waters of Kumano Kodo. It is forced to take a bath and after ruling out the oldest bathrooms in Japan, World Heritage -Water boils as if it were the hell itself -, We opt for the public. The community (separated by sexes) is more expensive than private (400 yuan in front of 700), And the budget narrowness pushes us the first.
Wrinkled like a chick after his first contact with water, I looked with all the dignity that I was capable of -very diminished, in any case- The small cold water pool
Inside there are two large bathtub fed with hot springs, and in which tiny lichens and microorganisms of medicinal float float, a cold and another boiling. Where you were, clear, do what you see. A medium -sized -naked bare guy nestled in a stool next to a large mirror and rinses with a shower artichoke. I feel by his side and I do the same as I look sideways at a Japanese orondo who alternates one and another bathtub. I first introduced myself in the boiling water, All a stoicism test in which I believe I shrunk so much that I lost a standing size. Wrinkled like a chick after his first contact with water, I looked with all the dignity that I was capable of -very diminished, in any case- The small cold water pool, that reconciled me with the oriental world.
Embarmed by having overcome the trance, I repeated the operation once again, Because he had seen it to make the swimmer of huge belly and at that point, drunk by the vaho cloud, I had already mimicked me with its millenary traditions. To the point that I had not even stopped to think that the tiny unidentified floating objects that swarmed by the bathtub were something else than that, Groundwater sediments. Blessed waters. I have nothing else by hand to dry my shirt and before I go, I luxury my hair with an electric dryer. Who goes through the door of public bathrooms, When it has already dusk, He is a renewed and empty man of any hostile thought, A stranger in a world corner. A traveler.
In the Hopper´s, A modest Guesthouse at a good price, We have commissioned dinner because the people expire with the closure of the bathrooms and there is no trade where to buy some food. We had dinner on the ground, To the Japanese, In a cozy living room that is a small tower of Babel that knots conversations in several languages. Fortunately, There is beer. Before trying to rest in our futon, We played a card game. You don't have to make many efforts to fall asleep.
Navigating the Kumano-Kawa
Continuing to the Sanctuary of Hayatama requires two other days on foot, of which we do not have (We have a ticket to return to Osaka tomorrow), So we have decided to cover that distance by descending the Kumano-Kawa river as did the former pilgrims. I fear the worst, truth, accustomed to seeing traditions turned into tourist attraction in many parts of the world (The choreographed jumps of the Masai in a town of the Masai Mara fenced in cow droppings surrounded by tourists in flip flops often stir my memories). But, in any case, What are we after all? I now remember that offer in Kisoro, In southwest Uganda, On the border with the Congo and Rwanda, To go to visit a town of pigmeos. My friend Javier Brandoli and I quickly crossed my eyes. There was no need to speak. A touristada, We both think. We give up. And I think we are wrong.
A touristada, We both think. We give up. And I think we are wrong.
I was not willing to persevere in error now, I thought about the bus that led us to the collection point where we should start our vile. And that was convinced that the bus would be emptied at that stop and that we would have to queue until we were assigned a boat among hundreds of tourists. For not. Only a more dry Italian couple that the vinegar accompanied us and only a boat sailed, ours, With eight people aboard, including the crew and guide. They explained to me, They only make two trips a day (Hence it is essential to reserve in advance through the official Kumano Kodo website), Always at the expense of weather conditions. Today fortunately, It looks like a splendid and does not wind.
They supply us some life -down vests -the river crosses some rapid zone- and a traditional conical straw hat to protect us from the sun. I feel like the guiri who is going to visit the teacher with a monter in the head, But I am not resisting me before these insignificant easements.
For an hour and a quarter, We descend the river in the direction of the Pacific while the cranes that uproar the rumor of water with their crazy scouring. FLanqueted by dense forests, Spectacular waterfalls and abrupts cut with knife in the lush vegetation, Let's sail without shocks with stop included on the shore next to some rocks of tormented profiles. At one point, The guide draws a flute and sounds a melody that confuses time. I wonder -the skeptic always ends up appearing- If it will be his "chocolate paquito". The experience, in any case, It is pleasant.
The boat trip ends in Shingu, where is the kumano hayatama taisha, The second of the monasteries of our route. Before, We bought a bag of oranges by 150 yuan. The monastery, Like Mushu's, There is nothing special, So the visit does not take too much. We approach a line bus to the Nachi station, where we arrived after a comfortable path of 40 minutes. There it is time to wait half an hour –There is a small museum about the kumano kodo that helps to spend time– Another bus that takes us to Nachisan, where is the third -and without a doubt the most beautiful- of the temples, el Kumano Nachi Taisha, blessed by the largest waterfall in Japan (133 meters high and 30 wide in its days of greatest flow).
The most beautiful- of the temples, el Kumano Nachi Taisha, blessed by the largest waterfall in Japan
There are two bus stops: the first next to the road that leads to the base of the water jump and the second, Next to the long and steep staircase that leads to the temple. We start with the latter, from which they separate us 366 steps, Before descending to the four -story pagoda that the custody waterfall behind him. It is Japan concentrated in an image that, fortunately, Today does not spoil the fog. Is, also, The culmination of our spiritual path, that the soul has widened and returned the heart to those corners of childhood where the astonishment runs.
After paying 300 Yuan by head (students 200), We save others 103 steps to the idyllic lagoon where the water breaks after rushing more than a hundred meters. The photos are inevitable, Like fatigue, that at this point it begins to bother. We head, Also by bus, To the fishing town of Kii-katsuura, Japanese Neuralgic Center for Tuna Fishing. Already comforted by the bathroom in a guest-house next to the train station, We walk at night the solitary spring of tourist ships already tied and closed holder, We buy a second -hand kimono and take one of the best decisions on the trip, Swiss in Katsugati a memorable tuna menu by 1.800 yuan (2.800 If you incorporate smoked tuna). Beside us, A couple of western dinner in Quimono. The ability of the human being to inflicted ridiculous has no limits.
