Day 9 - Hiwasa Town

We arrived in the town of Hiwasa, our goal for the day, at about 11 a.m. after only 10 kilometers of walking. We first went to our business hotel to register but there was no one there. It was only a small place, with probably less than 10 rooms and the owner's apartment. As we had approached the hotel, we had noticed a coffee shop on the nearest corner. So as we often did, we decided to go for coffee. It was a typical old fashion shop with dark woodwork and a little old lady running the place. She was short and bent over, but seemed to like us and spent a lot of time talking with us. After we finished our coffee, we decided to have lunch and that led to another cup of coffee. The owner offered to call our hotel, but we decided to go back ourselves. This time a young woman answered the bell. She said that she had been out shopping when we came the first time. She gave us the keys to our room and we took our backs up and left them. Then we started off for Temple #23.

As we got close, we had this view of the tower between the buildings.

Ian crossed the street first and headed for the main gate that was right at the intersection.
It was a Wednesday afternoon, so there were few people around, even the food shops in front of the gate were closed.
As you can see, the view was quite impressive with the main temple grounds on the hill between the gate and the tower.
The roof of the gate has some very interesting decorations. They looked like some kind of devil or an animal or something.