No more monkeys

On Tuesday, Hunty and I went to Arashiyama. I needed to say my farewells to the monkeys, and there were a few other things that we wanted to do there.

The first order of the day was to hike up the monkey mountain to see the monkeys. Every time we have gone to Arashiyama, that has been the first thing we have done, so we kept to our traditon.

Not a monkey, but he seemed to fit in among them

Lord of his domain

After feeding and photographing the monkeys, and promising them I would be back again someday for a repeat, we hired a row boat for an hour and paddled around on the river. To Hunter's great amusement, every time I picked up the oars, I started working them backwards, but eventually I figured it out, and we had a lovely time bobbing around in the sunshine, though we moved very slowly upriver, and only marginally faster back down.

After lunch, we caught the "Romantic Scenic Train" that wound it's way upriver from Arashiyama. I'm not sure about the "Romantic" part, it was crowded and there were heaps of kids around, but the train travelled along the river pretty much the whole way, except the frequent tunnels, and the views of the river were stunning.

A new friend from the train

Once we arrived at the train's destination, we needed to find a way back. We had a few options, and decided to take a boat down the river, which first meant getting a bus to the boarding location. It was expensive, $40 each, and I suspect we wouldn't have done if we'd known in advance, but buy then we'd been 10 minutes on a bus, and would have to retrace our steps back to the train station, and then find a way back, so we decided that we might as well pay up.

The cruise, or whatever you call it, was amazing. There were three men working the boat. One in the back with a rudder, and two in the front moving the boat. The one on the right used an oar/paddle, the one on the left poled along the bottom, and occasionally of rocks. I'm not quite sure how it all balanced out, but it seemed to work well.

Sometimes we just drifted down the river, enjoying the stunning scenery, the peace broken only by the creak of the oar. Other times, the water got rough and we raced between rocks and down small drops, often passing extremely close to the rocks either side of us. It got shrieks out of many of the passengers, and whoops of excitement of me, though the men manning the boat treated it all as routine, which I suppose it was. The boat was always well controlled.

Towards the end of the boat trip, once we'd reached the calm, broad expanse of the river near the town, a floating food vendor pulled up beside us for a few minutes hawking his wares. We passed on the squid, octopus, and everything else he was selling.

Soon after that, we arrived at our destination, and we wrapped up our last sight-seeing day trip for Japan.