IE Island!

What a wonderful Veteran's Day weekend! Our school had parent-teacher conferences on the 8th and 9th, so I had a 5 day weekend! I really didn't do much on Thursday and Friday except relax and enjoyed being able to sleep in!

Friday night, we went to buy some supplies to make the kittens a new climbing post because the one Dan made before is just getting too small for them. We were able to get another free empty cardboard carpet roll from Makeman, and we got a base and another piece of wood for them to sit on. You'll see when its all finished, and then I'll make more sense. At least in this picture, you can see how long the roll is!

Dan had PT at 7 am on Saturday..lucky him! And then he had soccer practice at 10 am, so we just relaxed until about 1 pm. Then, we needed to pick some twine up from Makeman to finish wrapping their climbing pole. We stopped there on our way to a movie theater on a base down south (where we actually got the kitties from!). We had been wanting to see "Brave" and hadn't caught it at any closer theaters, so we didn't mind spending a little extra time to drive down to see it. It was a pretty good movie! I'd recommend it if you enjoy a good animated movie. From there, we checked out their tiny little BX and their commissary. It sure made me thankful to have our BX! They do have a pretty great view of the water throughout the whole base though; I'll give them that. We then drove straight to church for their Saturday night service!

Sunday, November 11th, around 9am, the Danahers picked us up and we drove up the expressway to Motobu Port. We got our ferry tickets and departed around 11! The ferry ride was only 30 minutes- not bad at all. Fortunately, someone from our resort picked us up at the port and we were able to check in early and drop off our bags before we started exploring the resort and the island.

So windy at the port! 

Little snack bar in the ferry

Almost there!

We had the option of bringing our car with us but decided we
didn't need it on an island that is 12 miles around.

We were surprised to have a room with a balcony!

View from our room

Our two twin beds :)

We decided to look at their beach first, and stop at the gift shop and grab a snack before we started exploring the island and looking for a place to eat lunch. Surprisingly, the sweet potato chips were pretty good! Then, we headed towards the mountain. There really wasn't much to see on the way there- a few buildings, some vending machines, and no restaurants. We finally found the base of the mountain and followed the road up to the little lookout spot which was as high as cars could go. Then, we climbed about 300 very steep steps to the top! Not an easy thing to do, but the view was wonderful! 

The resort's beach

About to climb all the stairs!

The top of Mount Gusuku

Coming back down almost seemed harder
just because they were so steep

After we hiked back down the mountain, we walked to the Wajee water spring lookout point. I'm sure its beautiful on a clear day with bright blue water, but that day it was just super windy and cloudy. Still a neat sight to see though. We kept walking and went by some Marine installation (not sure what they do there), made a circle around the golf course, and ended up at the hibiscus garden and greenhouse. Sadly, we never found the cave we were looking for. Finally, we headed back to the resort after our 8.5 mile walk! We opted to eat dinner at the resort rather than walking more to hunt for a restaurant. We were all pleased with our food, but maybe that's because we never found a place to have lunch! After dinner, we went to the little gift shop to find some dessert. I really liked my ice cream bits with a chocolate coating- I think I'll look for some in a local store sometime soon! Dan and I also tried a cola made from brown sugar and a pink one that used dragon fruit and fruit juice I think. Both were made exclusively on IE Island, so we thought we'd give them a try. We ended the night by taking advantage of the free massage chair, rented the movie UP, and crashed!

Monday, November 12th, we enjoyed a breakfast buffet at the hotel...nothing like soups, fish, fried rice, bacon, and scrambled eggs for breakfast. We figured we had covered pretty much the whole island by then, so we were going to take the next ferry back but we realized we had 3 hours to kill still. So we checked out, and thankfully the front desk held our bags, and we started walking to find a couple monuments. The first one we found was for an American journalist who died on the island, and honestly I have no idea what the second one was. 

Finally, we found the little tourist center/gift shop. The worker told us something in Japanese that we interpreted as "Hey, go check out the new section back here!" So we did, and found a Habu snake hatchery with about 5 snakes and a few little mice running around. We didn't get to see any action though. And then there was a little museum full of old artifacts from WWII. On our way out, she rambled something else off and we said thank you and were on our way. But then she chased after us and said something else...and in the end we heard "1,200" meaning we each owed 300 yen for visiting the museum. We had no clue! There was no sign posted or anything, and we figured it was free to walk through the shop and little museum room. But on the plus side, she gave us each a bag of free nuts. :)

That was our final stop, so we went back to the resort and waited for the shuttle to take us back to the ferry. I think we walked about 4 miles today. After yesterday, we figured we could do anything and it would seem short! So that pretty much sums up our mini vaca on IE Island! We did a TON of walking and sight seeing, and had fun hangin with the Danahers!