To cut a long story short, our visit to see the Northern Alps turned out to be a major disappointment: our first so far this trip, and hopefully the only one! Basically, the Shinhotaka Ropeway is used by visitors to get up to the summit for that glorious view of Mt. Hotaka operates in two sections: Ropeway 1 that brings visitors up to around 1,451 meters altitude, and Ropeway 2 with its iconic double-decker gondola, will bring visitors the rest of the way. We purchased combo tickets – bus and ropeway, roundtrip – at the Nohi Takayama Bus Terminal, took off at the 7AM bus, made it to the base station at 8:37AM – only to receive the bad news upon arrival that Ropeway 2 is closed because of strong winds. Ropeway 1 was still operating though, but there isn’t much to see at the midpoint.
Still, since we’d arrived and we didn’t want to waste the effort it took to get here, we decided to just chill at the cafe at the midpoint, had some really yummy pastries – including Hida beef curry pies – to well, soak in the atmosphere before making our way down the ropeway again to catch the 10:55AM return bus to Takayama. There was a partial refund though on account that we never got to use the ticket segment for Ropeway 2.
A couple of not very spectacular photos – there really isn’t much of a view at Ropeway Station 1 – and of the process.
We got back to Takayama, had lunch, then headed to our next stop – Hida Folk Village. Continued in the next post!