Day 17 - On into the rain

We saw a sign that was an intriguing problem that we never really solved. The sign says that the space behind it is a special parking lot for "One and a half view". Actually the way it is written here it is "One times one over two times 'view'", which makes it even less understandable.
The rain finally started to come down, and it came down in buckets. We put on our rain clothes and walked for awhile. As we sent up a little hill we found, at the top, a restaurant made of logs and having a large sign that said coffee. We could not resist and went in. Since we were hungry we ordered coffee and curry. The place was fairly empty, just some local women and their kids. However, soon the Henro Pilgrims started coming in to get out of the rain and we found ourselves sitting with many of the people we had been seeing all day. One of the people who came in was the mysterious Spaniard, we had been hearing about. Since Ian wanted to brush up his Spanish, he started a long conversation with him. It turned out that he had heard about the Pilgrimage and decided to do it, even though he had never been in Japan and knew no Japanese at all. He had a map and a dictionary. Both in Spanish because he knew no English. He had no reservations and each day relied on the people he met to find a place for him to stay. He said that so far he had found a place indoors every night but he was expecting to have to stay outside at least a few times. I should mention that he had no sleeping equipment. Actually he had not much more than the clothes he was wearing. He was a true pilgrim.

Finally we decided that we had better get going or we would be late for supper at our lodge, which was going to be the most expensive one on the trip. It was still raining cats and dogs so we changed back into our rain gear on the porch. Ian has a red Gortex rain suit. Mine is green and black. The rectangular blue thing just past Ian is my backpack.
This is a view of the ocean off the same porch.
We were still following the hiking/bicycling road that had been built on the old railroad bed. We were certainly glad each time we reached a tunnel because they were the only places where we could get out of the rain.