On Saturday morning, we got up (really!) early, found the port quickly (it was only about 5 kilometers from where we were staying), purchased our tickets on the spot (when I called before we started C2C, they said there was no need to make reservations), and boarded the ferry. Here's a picture of Jody riding into the mouth of the monster herself, at 6:05 a.m., 15 minutes before departure.
Customer service in Japan tends to be fantastic, so it was no surprise that there was someone waiting to secure our bikes for the ride.
Here's a shot looking back at the sun rising over the port of Yawatahama. Shikoku slayed. Kyushu, here we come!
By this point of the ride, my gloves were toast. I guess you could say they were the only member of the party to not survive the hurricane. For some reason, even though I hadn't worn them in days, I continued to bring the gloves along, but I finally chucked them immediately after taking this picture.
Jody took this picture of me eating "breakfast," which came compliments of our gracious host in Honai, Chelsea. Even though she was out of town, she let us stay at her place, believe it or not, and, what's more, left an entire box of cookies for us and told us that we could take the whole thing if we wanted. Normally, I doubt we would have done that, but, well, considering that we were two hungry bike riders on a mission, there was little doubt what the fate of those cookies would be. Right? We had a few each as a pre-dinner snack last night, a few more each for dessert, and the rest aboard the ferry. Thanks, Chelsea!
While aboard the ferry, we were kind of like little kids in a candy shop, except that we expressed our happiness in the form of taking one picture after another. I guess that's because we spent so much of C2C on our bikes, whereas on the ferry we were free to walk around and enjoy ourselves, just as we did on the other ferry (from Hokkaido to Honshu). It's only 6:30 a.m. so it's still a bit cold on deck, but the view is wonderful.
As I said, we took tons of pictures on board the ferry. For example, Jody took this picture of me taking a picture...
... I took this picture of Jody striking his all-too-familiar pensive pose...
... Jody took this picture of one of the more interesting things on the ship (I hate to tell you Jody, but you just barely cut off the "U.")...
... and I took this shot of one of the ship's lifebuoys that includes the vessel's name, Ehime, which is also the name of the prefecture we just left.
Here we are, at 8:58 a.m., just minutes before docking in Beppu. I "interrupted" this picture that Jody was taking in such comical style that we took many more pictures like this one over the course of the final two days of C2C.
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