Nago Part 1

On Friday, Alison and I made our trek up to Nago to spend some time sightseeing and away from our wood box. We checked into the Marriott, thank you again Mark, and found our room on the 13th floor to be very cute and quiet with an AMAZING view! The reservation said we would have a partial ocean view room…let me tell you, there was nothing partial about it!! It is awesome and far better than the Marriott in Tokyo. We settled in, read a little bit and napped a little bit (of course!), then had dinner. After coming back to the hotel we made our way down to the indoor pool/jacuzzi for some relaxation then finished off the night with a Christmas movie. (This, my friends, is what they call a partial view!)

It was so great to sleep in on Saturday! We slowly got up, sat in the “living room” (you can see the pictures below) and read, then finally got ready and headed out for a trip to the northernmost tip of the island (Cape Hedo). It was about an hour and fifteen minute drive up, and the view was so worth it! I am simply amazed by the ocean here. It is more beautiful than I could ever picture and I still can’t believe that I live here!

I told Alison I would NOT travel out like those psycho people!

We were thinking one side of the tip had to be the Pacific Ocean so let's just pretend that you all live over there!! -->From the top we went across a bit to Sekirinzan-Kouen. We thought this was just going to be a rock formation that we would walk up to, grab a view pictures, then head out. Instead, when we walked up a man guided us to the ticket booth and said the bus would be leaving in 5 minutes. We bought our ticket and awaited the bus that would take us up to the starting points of 4 different courses that we could take to walk through this national park. We chose the “scenic” course. We walked in through the jungle that has some pretty odd shaped rocks. Alison was just talking about how we needed to start walking more and apparently today was the day for that! We walked for about an hour until we made it back to the car.

...And you all thought Alison was a nice, tame, completely normal person!!...okay well not exactly
A fabulous view from the hike

This is the top of our hike with the panoramic view...sorry for the bad picture, a family along the way took it for us! This is what we really came here to see...little did we know there would be so much more to it! I think this is the first time I have felt small in Japan!

Cuz let me tell you...THIS does NOT make me feel small!
We drove down south a bit and tried to find a pottery store, glass store, weaving factory, and waterfall that should have all been within walking distance of each other. Unfortunately, our reliable tour book gave really vague directions (go figure) and we only found the weaving factory. We decided it was time to head back so with one last stop at Jusco (shopping center) we made our way back to the hotel for some rest before dinner.

Sunday- Originally we planned to make a stop at Nago Paradise Park on the way to the Zoo and Pineapple park (yes we’re going again…we ran out of cookies J ), but I gently brought up the thought that this was going to cost us $6 to see plants and we changed those plans! So we headed down the wonderful route 58 to the zoo. This zoo reminded me of a cross between the San Diego Wild Animal Park and any other zoo. The first thing we walked in to was the flamingo pond where the flamingos were literally walking around next to us. There were some other fascinating things there, like the community farm that had a little pen with pigs and dogs together. Who does that?? We also walked by a lemur that scared the living daylights out of us when it decided to scream and leap onto the cage…yikes!

Alright, image walking into a zoo and immediately see this right in front of you!

Can you find it?
Did you know dogs and pigs belong in the same pen?
We had to take a picture with Thomas, after all he is who we named our car after!

From the zoo we went to the Pineapple Park but we made a quick stop at Fruit Land…haha, yup there was fruit plants, and more fruit plants, a few butterflies and birds, and more fruit plants…we won’t be going there again haha…So on to the Pineapple Park. We really like the Pineapple Park, especially the cookie samples. Last time we were there Alison and I were both eyeing the perfume that smelled wonderful, but the ladies would only let us smell the sticks and not try it on, so we passes. This time we were hoping the lady would be nicer and let us try….she didn’t, but since there are two different scent bottles that together make one pineapple (you can buy them both or separately) and Alison and I like different bottles we bought it. The ladies there were so excited they gave Alison a little squeeze! Lol My guess is they made their quota for the day. Someone come visit us please so we have another excuse to go back! :)