…not like we did after travelling though. Now we smell kinda like death.

This lovely guy was greeting us at our first stop for the day, Hell Valley. Its a few hours outside of Sapporo, but has some pretty interesting geological features. It was a volcano that pretty violently became a valley.

We also picked up a few more of the OMF Team for the conference, Jessie, Katie and Kareen (sp?)

The valley had become a popular tourist destination, not due to the extremely string smell of sulphur which permeates every cell of your body so that you can’t stop smelling it without burning away the inside of your nose, but due to the hot springs, which are filled with various minerals which are apparently good for you, even if they make the water look like this:

It also had a spring that erupted every few minutes. I shouldn’t have worn my glasses today:

We then wandered about the park, and found the ‘foot bath’, where the water was warm, grey, and apparently quite good for you. I took my camera out to catch the inevitable slip and soak, but managed to take a group photo instead.

We had a delicious lunch, even though they wouldn’t give us chopsticks, and travelled further to get to a MASSIVE lake. It was huge, and had swans. Not actual swans, but pedal boats. We had Ice cream and stared pensively over the lake.

To be fair, it was a really good view.

A REALLY good view.

See? Big lake.

And now, after sleeping in the car, and taking copious amounts of photos of scenery we’re back at the guest house for prep for the actual Conference.

Yay! Actual work!

N.B. Some of us have pain from walking on pre existing injuries. Prayer appreciated.

Dave. I think I just heard a pteradactyl… no wait… it was Anna. Weird.