Miyakojima Travel Report – Part 3
Weather still didn’t look great in the morning of the 30th of April. Cloudy again, but at least it wasn’t raining, so I set out to the last bridge and the last island to the north of Miyako, called Ikema. Really lonely there – nice! One ring road circles the island, and the ride by car takes maybe 15 min. On the northern edge is a small, inaccessible lighthouse. Inside the island is a wetland with apparently a lot of birds, but surely also a lot of mosquitoes. I got stung already once around my hotel and my foot was half swollen, so no thanks to wetlands.
Before the bridge back to the main island was a small resting area with a few booths for food and souvenirs. You could get onto the roof of one of the shops which serves as a viewing platform.
Having too much time at my hands, I rode again to the wind turbine area for a lunch break. Then – what to do? I had seen all there is to see around the islands and it was only noon. For a moment I thought to go back down to the big lighthouse yet again, but then I saw some sign with “marine park” that I had so far missed, made a u-turn and headed there. The road did not look promising at all, super small and between fields, was this gonna lead anywhere? But then, to my surprise, I arrived at a stately building that housed quite an attraction. For a 1000 yen you can walk down stairs into a cliff and at the bottom of the stairs you are below sea level and can see into the water through some 20 windows.
Underwater ocean viewing. Very cool. You don’t have an aquarium beyond the glass but real ocean and who’s watching who? The fish watch the weird humans or we watch them? Lol. Next to the ocean viewing building was a nice cafe where I had a giant mango parfait 
Thus the trip through the back roads turned out to be quite rewarding.
On my last full day at Miyako and having seen “everything” I decided to go back to my favorite spot pn the island of Shimoji and the second trip there turned out to be only partly a repetition, I discovered three other places I had not been to at the first round. One of them another lovely beach. Next, a giant boulder that a tsunami from around 1770 (I forgot the exact year) has left on the island. The more or less inaccessible beach behind it is maybe another ten meters deep and thus the tsunami must have measured at least ten meters, probably more. gulp.
I went once more to the sink holes too and in one of them divers appeared. Wow.
I guess you must be pretty experienced to dive through those underwater caves and rock in presumably total darkness to emerge in that lake.
On I went around the airport once more, bolder this time, parking the car more often and getting out more often. The rock bay was also a surprise, the tide was low and left the rocks more exposed. It was still beautiful but it actually looked prettier with more water in the bay. I spent some time wandering around on the rock bay beach looking for critters but found astonishingly few.
Then I rode to a viewing spot from atop Irabu island (the neighbor of Shimoji). I had missed that one too at the first trip and am glad I went there after all, since it is rather high and offers a fantastic view of Miyako, the bridge between Irabu and Miyako and also the island of Irabu itself. In total I rode over that big bridge 4 times and 302 km around the five islands of Miyako, Ikema, Irabu, Shimoji and Kurima. If I need to pick a favorite it’s Shimoji and Irabu (after all they are more or less one).
It was a wonderful trip and next on the menu will probably be Ishigaki island, some 140 km further west from Miyako. 
