sponsorship

During the hike, we discovered that many teams were sponsored by banks and other big companies... this permitted them to get a huge amount of money in one go without any personal effort.

Our team is proud to have raised funds organising workshops, selling cookies, making postcards, etc... We did not only raise funds (you can check the amount here) but we also raised awareness among friends, family and people we met.
We know that money is important in the world we live today, but one must not forget that awareness is the first step to any change.

We are as well enormously proud to have been sponsored not by a bank but by a yoga studio! :D Thanks a lot, Leza and all yogis and yoginis at SUN AND MOON for your donations! We are a wonderful community!
(If you still don't know about SUN AND MOON, click here to find out about this amazing yoga community)

WE THANK YOU ALL, ALL, ALL!

OXFAM Trailwalker 2008 - the hike

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Heeeeeeyyyyyyy We made it!!!!!

100km in 45h 40min, 5440m ascended and 4880 descended ;-)
... and we are still alive and we can walk, with swollen feet but we can!

From 200 teams of 4 walkers, 93 teams finished with all 4 members.
We were number 80! not bad, eh!
You can check the results here.

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Here is the story of the hike through photos made by people that we met along the way:


In spite the early hour of Friday morning we were quite fresh when it all started.

Samurai were there also, but no, they were not walking.

As we said, fresh and in good mood before the start.

And Uhuuuuu, the walk started in big style.

There were quite frequent traffic jam with over 800 people participating.

First mountain top on the way, everything was easy piiizi.

Checkpoint 1: 8 km fromt the start.

... and checkpoint 2 (18.5 km from the start) was just a little bit further, compared with the rest it was still only beginning.

The sunset of the first day arrived just when we were passing by Ashinoko lake.

Some art made by Joyce, she couldn't resist the temptation even after walking 25km.

Resting a bit in the first night ... maybe looking for some hidden food?

Checkpoint 4 (39 km from the start) at 4:30am, just before leaving. We had about 4h of "sleep" with the lights on and people constantly moving around, can you see that on our faces?

A view on Hakone area from a mountain ridge.

Miojingatake, a mountain with smoke rising from the ground. At first we thought it was an active volcano which actually wouldn't be surprising at all. But, it was just the sun drying the soil after some light rain.

Checkpoint 5 or 55km into the walk. It seems that the person taking the photo was more tired than us judging by the blurry result. :D

Some beautiful tea plantations along the way. The smell of matcha was magic!

At checkpoint 6 (63km fromt he start), we were a bit wet after a light rain.

Beautiful leaves with some remains of rain water on them.

At checkpoint 8 (94 km fromt he start), we felt it was almost finished. Judging by Martin's face, he was not really looking forward to the remaining 6km :D . This was at 4am after walking for almost 5hours from checkpoint 7 where we had about 2h of "sleep". At checkpoint 7 (76 km from the start) we even forgot to make a photo, but believe us, we passed though there!!!

Finally, the awaited finish line arrived after walking for 45h and 40min! OK, OK... we spent 6 of those hours "sleeping".

I guess, this needs no comment... we were so tired that some were even hugging some green creatures!! btw, Joyce hates green!!! :D :D :D

Yes, that was it. It was a great experience and we are very happy that we made it.
Thanks to ALL OF YOU for the support, you helped us a lot with your emails and smsss!!

We had you and you and you in our minds at every step...!

YOU WALKED WITH US!

Training Day II CP5-Finish

The other two team members also wanted to feel the exhastion of a long walk before the actual trailwalker and so we did the 2nd trainging day. Here they are, Purdey and Kaori, on one of the mountain tops on the way. This time, we did the 2nd half of the Trailwalker course from CP5 all the way to the finish point. It was again about 45km and we did it in 15 hours.


As the sun came up in the morning, Fuji-san was checking on us how we were doing.


and then it appeared in its full beauty

Here we are just before the finish at the lake ;-)

Next report will be the actuall Trailwalker :-o