Kourijima

Today, two things happened: I made a new friend and I visited a new place. Score! First things first, everyone go give Kacey of Kacey's Kitchen and Where in the World is Kacey some blog lovin'! She and I linked up via the web about a month ago and have been following each other on different social media outlets.  Through that, we learned that we both really love exploring and our husbands are boring. Ha! Just kidding about the husbands part, but it is true that it's more often than not that we are being adventurous on our own. So we thought, why not join forces?!

Wild lilies are blooming all over Okinawa... AMAZING!

Our big plan was to go bike around the Lily Festival on Ie Island, near Nago. We literally talked about it for two weeks and today was the day! We got to the Motobu Port to find out that we had missed the 10AM ferry (it was 12:30) and the next ferry wasn't until 3PM. Apparently, they only run on the hour during the weekends. Whoopsies! Neither of us wanted to waste the trip so we pointed to some random islands that were accessibly by bridge and we were on our way!

I had my bike in the back of Kacey's car and we noticed right away that they had bike rentals at a nearby shop for her. Yay! However, we didn't really know (and we didn't really think about) if Kouri Island was bike friendly. Well... not just bike friendly, but LEISURELY biking. We both were thinking of a relaxing bike ride to find cool stuff.

See how I'm so casual and happy with my bike and beer? Yeah, that ended quickly! About 5 minutes into the ride I was pushing my bike up a steep hill and stopping for sipping breaks. Just thinking about it makes me laugh. We took it in stride... and by that I mean we stopped at the first restaurant we could find for a "much needed" break.

After lunch, we just rode around. Sometimes we would stop for pictures and other times we would find cool trails. It was really fun to explore on our bikes even though the hills were sometimes pretty awful. Luckily, the day turned out to be beautiful and, at one point, I was worried about getting a tan line (that's a good thing considering all of the gloomy, rainy days recently).

We rode down a trail and then walked down a path to find this gem of a location! 

There was an entire wall of someone's home covered in bobbers. I have lots of photos, but this was my fave!

Hey girl! The color of this water never gets old.  

The bridge from the main island into Kourijima 

I call this photo "perfect timing" because I was a little nervous that a car was going to take out my bike and camera!

On our way to the car, I saw the cutest old people eating soba and enjoying their afternoon. I asked if I could take photos of them and they agreed... and giggled the whole time!

Today was a great day, even though we didn't make to Ie Island. Tomorrow, if the weather is nice, we are going to try again! Wish us luck!!