Shikoku holy sites, day 9 + Tengu highlands

A man-made waterfall?

It's getting too cold to ride in the mountains now, but there's still plenty of mountain scenery we want to see. The Tengu highlands in the Karusto mountains, as recommended to us by Sappa, was one such location.

Cows, rocks, scrub and clouds. Reminded me a lot of British scenery.

Both our air mats had finally given up the ghost and been abandoned, but we had only picked up one aluminium mat to replace them. The Tengu highland camp site staff kindly lent us another when we realised there weren't any shops in a one hour radius. Nice to have when it's 8C out. The real star of the show was Yasuhide-san, the former Yakuza with a heart of gold(?) He had a home-made pizza oven set up outside and was selling them at 800 yen a pop, which is well beyond our budget. He drunkenly greeted me as I left the baths around 9pm and after we got chatting suggested we fire up the oven and eat a few pizzas on him. I couldn't follow his slang and dialect completely, but he talked of fortunes made and lost, cheating wives, cheating, his three children scattered around who he can't contact and his girlfriend with cancer. From throwing around 1,800,000 yen (~$18,000) a month to his current subsistence living his conclusion was that 150,000 yen (~$1,500) a month is just about right: "not enough to cheat, but enough to live comfortably". He also insisted we take away a pile of charcoal to tide us over the cold Autumn nights.

This hardy little tree caught my eye.