The first event with the 探検部 had arrived! Yesterday on May 4th we, me and Tim, left the residence at 8:20am and went to 神戸 , got out at the 芦屋川 station and started our climb towards the mountain at around 10:30am and the weather was looking very good, clear sky and it ended up being 30 or so degrees. A little hot maybe, but it was not too bad.
I had some ideas about how the mountain climb would be, but once we arrived at the mountain, we walked some rocky paths. Which, for someone who comes from the a land with not really any rocks, is really awesome. Then something came that I was hoping for a little bit, but completely wasn't expecting: a rocky wall, needed to truly be clumb. Not extremely tall, but still a few meters.
Along the way during the climb we came several times across a sign to be wary of wild boars, which we sadly did not come a cross. However we did come across huge wasps, and I mean huge like 4cm huge and little salamanders and 1cm ants, things you don't really come across in the Netherlands.
At one point we reached a little reststop near a small road... and then next to that small road, was a golf court... After a short rest with everyone we went further ahead and found a little sink with drinkwater, which was very cold and rather tasty!
The climb was not too difficult in my opinion, but I hate stairs sooo much right now. Stairs were really the hardest things to climb, and I am not kidding. But after finally almost reaching the top, we got to this big reststop with a cafeteria where they sold カキ氷: shaved ice, which is like completely unused in the Netherlands, but is used as a very refreshing icecream in Japan by putting a syrup over it. After waiting for everyone to get to the top, seeing as we were about the first to reach the location. And after having a pretty long rest, we walked the last 5 minutes to reach the top of 六甲山 at 931 meters after at total of about 5-7 hours including the reststops (Didn't bring my watch and my cellphone died somewhere halfway, so I had no real awareness about time. At the top, on the pole of 931m now lies a Beatrix 10 euro cent coin. Along with two 5円 coins. When finishing our business up there we went down along a different route which took about 1-2 hours and after some alking through a very typical Japanese town which is famous for their 温泉, we came to the station of 有馬温泉. Some went to the 温泉 and some went home, Tim and I thought it was a fine time to go home as we also did not really want to get back into our dirty clothes after the 温泉.
Took quite some pictures and will upload them to facebook sometime soon. All in all, it was a great day, except at one point there was a rescue team trying to find a missing child...
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