Beach Rock Village

OK, where to even begin?! I was able to find information on a place in Okinawa where you could stay in a YURT! Per Wikipedia, a yurt is "a portable, bent wood-framed dwelling structure traditionally used by nomads in the steppes of Central Asia". So I forwarded it to Joel, and being amazing, he incorporated one evening in a yurt to our trip!

Here's where it gets fun: there was an English version of the website available, so one would assume Beach Rock Village would have folks there that speak English. Nope, not so much. Thank Goodness for iPhones and translation apps.

Next, the website and reviews gave us a bit of a different concept of what to expect. As you will see from the pictures, it was totally a hippie village. Super sweet people and beautiful surroundings, but man oh man, it was a hodge podge of buildings, critters, and pony-tailed Japanese.

Lastly, the road to this place was 20 minutes up a windy mountain trail where we felt sure we were going to be murdered and buried. No one would have been able to find us! LOL. It was pretty scary, not gonna lie, but overall we had a very unique experience. And once we settled in, we were able to truly appreciate the beauty and eclectic-ness of the village and laugh and smile with the folks that live/work there despite the massive language barrier.

There were wild horses everywhere. Really nice and friendly, but where there are horses, there be poop.

The "Village" was literally on the side of a mountain in the middle of no where

They had really neat tree houses and other places to eat and view the valley below

Inside the yurt, there were two, immobile beds. They were pretty rock hard but kinda comfy.

The view of the door from inside the yurt. There were a couple of places around the Village where they put colored glass in doors, which was a really nice effect when the light shone through.

The yurt had nice hardwood floors and one double outlet for the air and a single lightbulb. It wasn't exactly critter-proof as we had a giant grasshopper who liked to hop right onto US. There were a couple lizards too and we could hear and see all the birds that landed on the roof!

A little library and seating area that overlooked the valley.

The valley

This was the view of the main lodge where some folks were staying for the evening. This is also where we had homemade breakfast and dinner - vegetarian because it was primarily comprised from the vegetables and grains they grow on the property. Truly hippie style and delicious. :)

This was the property bathroom and showers. The showers actually weren't working as they had just had a typhoon that interfered with the water supply. It wasn't a huge deal because we were only there for one night, but they felt bad and gave each of us one free drink at their cafe/bar which was housed in a giant yurt!

This was the cafe yurt! All these folks worked at the Village and were preparing for the evening ahead.

Some more outdoor seating

A beautifully crafted tree house...

... that was unfortunately closed to the public :-(

A random building on the property

Another random building... I swear. You'd have to have been there, but this place was totally other worldly and so odd yet so uniquely amazing!

Seriously, this is in Japan?!

Joel making friends...

The exterior of our yurt... We were some of the only folks staying at the Village this particular evening. ONE of the other guests did speak some English though, so it was fun to try to communicate and get to know him over dinner and at the cafe later in the evening.

A teepee was also an option for lodging

As was tent camping. You can kinda see on the right, there was a platform that held tents which were super cheap to stay in and gave you a real village feel!

A building that was having some work done...

A quick peek into the shared kitchen area of the tent camping portion of the Village. That was another reason we wanted a yurt - the price included meals at the lodge, unlike the folks who chose to tent camp.

We got there early enough in the afternoon to enjoy a brew and a homemade, stone oven curry chicken pizza before we just chilled for a few hours in our yurt reading books and getting attacked by giant grasshoppers.

The view from the platform where we chose to eat our food.

The pizza. YUM!

 Even though our initial feeling was of fear, we had a BLAST here at Beach Rock Village. It's definitely not for everyone but it was for us. It was cost effective and a life experience we are not likely to forget EVER. After dinner,which was at 7:00, all of the folks that live/work there have a meeting until 8:30. Once this is over, everyone just hangs out in the cafe/bar yurt and talks and drinks and has a grand ol' time. We chilled out there until about 10:30 with the folks, but because of the language barrier and also because we're old and get tired easily, we crashed. But we woke up a lot because they were out there until well past 2:00am talking and laughing! It wasn't annoying or upsetting at all because it was a really interesting look into this hippie, Japanese culture.

We survived unscathed and will always remember this place with fondness. :)