Kanazawa to Takayama

We took the highway bus to Takayama leaving late in the afternoon. This is mountain country and the scenery is incredibly beautiful. Throw away the tera (temples), the jinja (shrines), the shiro (castles) and maybe even the gardens and give us the green and the white mountains, the green and blue ocean and the mountain streams and waterfalls!
Anyway I was feeling sorry for the bus driver on this ride, not because he was driving and could not enjoy the scenery with us, but because none of us spent much time enjoying the scenery. The reason being that we were driving on tunnel highway through the Hida mountains. You briefly exited one tunnel and another one would appear. What monotonous driving for our driver! One tunnel was 11 eleven kilometers long.
We made a brief stop at Shirakawa which focused attention on the next human interest story lady from takayama.