Okinawa consists of a series of islands. Okinawa-honto is considered to be the main island, with a plethora of islands in its relative vincinity.
One of those is a heavily forested island named Iriomote (the jima in the title is Japanese for 'island'), which we wanted to visit.
So we got up very early for our flight to Ishigaki, which is the island connecting you to various islands surrounding it, including Iriomotejima.
Flying there from Naha is but a small jump; we were there within the hour, smooth flight all the way.
Upon arrival, we hopped into a taxi to Ue-something, to get to the ferry which would take us to our destination.
We went for a river tour through the mangrove forest; very interesting and beautiful to see. The boat took us to the origin of the river we just sailed, where we stopped for just over two hours to make a trek through the woods on the mountain towards the waterfalls.
There is a path; mostly paved with rocks and concrete, but it's also riddled with roots from the trees alongside of it, which makes it more difficult to scale the mountain.
It's kind of fun, though, trying to walk the path, looking out for places to set your feet, seeing small lizards slip away between the leaves and basically making a couple of full circles around the summit.
There are all sorts of living things in those woods, including wild boar and the famous
Iriomote Wildcat.
Unfortunately, those wildcats are small in number and terribly shy, on top of being nocturnal animals, so the chance of seeing one in the wild is slim to none.
So I bought myself a plushie upon returning at Ishigaki. ^^;;.
It took about 30 minutes to reach the first lookout point, which had a beautiful view:
After a well-earned rest and some water, Rob and I walked the rest of the path towards the end, which rewarded us with this:
By the time we got there, we had less than an hour left of the two-hour break, so we had to hurry a bit to get back in time, but we made it.
After returning to the starting point, we called a cab which took us back to the harbour for our boat to Ishigaki.
We couldn't hang around much longer because of time restraints (our flight back was at 18:00, we had just 90 minutes left before boarding), but it's most definitely something to return to.
This was a rather expensive trip, though; the flight alone was more than what we are spending on one week of accommodation, but it was well worth it.
Upon arrival at Naha Airport, we were lucky to see
ANA's Pikachu airplane of Pokémon fame sitting on the tarmac, so I took a snap.
Unfortunately, this was the only angle I could take the picture from.
Tomorrow is our last full day on Okinawa; I have some shopping to do.
Cheers, K.