Hiking to the Lost World

Before we got to the island, Adam bought this crappy stapled together, 2007 home-printed book about climbing on Okinawa.  A really awesome guy attempted to give a detailed book with several locations around Okinawa, how to get to each place and the type of climbing routes you can find.  Well, the first one we tried to find turned out to be bogus.  With his step by step directions we could not find anything.  There was no easy access trail, and there was no possible way it could be climbed.  We assumed it had become overgrown since 2007, as rock climbing is really not a big sport for the Japanese population.
Anyway, this Sunday, we decided to give the book another shot and find "The Lost World."  The writer described it as a 70 foot cliff wall with 23 different bolted climbing routes for all your rope clipping pleasure.  It was a rainy, kind of dreary Sunday, but we didn't want our weekend to go to waste.

We drove about an hour northbound, thru the city of Nago, up into the mountains of the North.

Per the step by step directions in the book, we got to Mt. Katsuyama, parked at a tiny little log cabin, admired the view, took a family photo (see pic) and walked to the bottom of a hill until we got to an overgrown farm.
At this point, I was thinking...this book is wack!!
Where is it taking us?!  But Cinder insisted, so we kept going and eventually found a trail.
It started to downpour around this time, and the 'dry' creek bed that we were supposed to hike up had turned into a flowing river.  We were all pretty excited!

We hiked through the river in a steady rain for about 30 minutes.  The water was clear, waterfalls around every river bend, we were under a thick rainforest canopy of palms, bamboo and various greenery, the leaves were shiny from the rain.  It seemed like a dream...until Cinder would come barreling through full speed, slipping on rocks, her eyes bugging out, sheer excitement and adrenaline.  She LOVED hiking in the river, in the rain, off her leash...and we loved watching.

Of course, there was also your fair share of creepy crawlies...spiders, mosquitos, dragonflies, butterflies, other critters that I don't even want to know about.

We were having a great time hiking, soaked but on a mission.

  Finally, we came around a bend and there she was..a 70 foot cliff face stared down at us, a mirroring mountain on the other side of the river, light came in through the valley and the rocky cliff glistened.  It was breathtaking.

 Adam examined all the bolted climbing routes, while I took lots of pictures, cleaned mud off my bare legs, played with Cinder and took in the beauty around us. 

 The one time Cinder was still during our hike, Adam was holding a treat.

 When we got back to the road, we were so tired, soaking wet, dirty, eaten by bugs, hungry and smiling really big.  It was such a cool place to bushwack through the rainforest, find an amazing 70 ft cliff face, hike through a river with beautiful clear waterfalls, and give our dog the time of her life.  What a great day.

We are SO glad that we found this hidden paradise!  Thank you old wack climbing book...maybe you aren't so bad after all. 
Next time we will go on a sunny day, with climbing gear and appropriate clothing, bug spray and friends.