Ishigaki

Ishigaki is part of the Ryukyu Islands, about 250 miles southwest of Okinawa. It’s just about as far south as you can go and still be in Japan. Our original plan, such as it was, for the day was to snorkel somewhere. But the weather was not cooperating. On our journey from Kagoshima the wind was howling and Insignia was bouncing and rolling on 4-5 meter swells. It did not look promising for waterborne activities.

It was gray, cool, and windy as we pulled into Ishigaki harbor. Given that, we revised our plans to get a driver and check out some of the other sights on the island. We were the first ones off the ship and worked out a time-based taxi rental with some help from a port attendant. Our target was Ishigaki Yaima Village, a park with monkeys, a mangrove trail, and old-style Japanese houses that have been relocated and preserved.

The drive over through thick subtropical greenery was beautiful. In about 20 minutes we were at the park. We bought our tickets (about $24 USD for the four of us) and went on in. With the wind continuing to blow it was straight up cold and we needed to keep moving just for the warmth. Our first order of business was to see the monkeys, so we headed that way. They have a group of squirrel monkeys in an enclosed area that you can enter. All of the monkeys were bunched up in groups, pressing against each other to provide warmth and protection from the wind. People were crouched down by them and monkeys would climb up and huddle on them. The boys loved this, and were able to coax a few monkeys onto their legs and hands.

After the monkey encounter we walked along the mangrove trail and went up an observation tower that provided nice views of the bay. You could tell that the water would be really beautiful on a sunny day. We walked around some more and investigated the traditional Japanese houses. We looked at the café, but couldn’t find anything vegetarian on the menu and were a little leery of trying to communicate our desires to the staff using nothing but Google translate and hand gestures. So we got back in our taxi and asked the driver to drop us in town so we could look for a restaurant as we walked back to the ship.

We had no more luck in that search. It was just after 2:00 on a Sunday and a number of restaurants were closed, either for the day or for the afternoon. Those that were open didn’t advertise much in the way of vegetarian options. So we just continued our walk – which turned out to be a pretty good hike in the end – back to Insignia. We grabbed a late lunch at Waves and then settled in to watch our departure.Read more