9.29.2008

Hiking in Mt. Seoraksan National Park------Vacation Part 3

After sunrise on Sunday, I hiked for the rest of the day. Mount Seoraksan National Park is supposedly one of the most beautiful areas in South Korea. If I had to compare with places I've been, I'd say it was a mixture of the Pacific Northwest and the Swiss Alps.
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In the center of the park there is a gigantic (I mean HUGE) statue of the Buddha. You can pay your respects/worship/etc. I have to say I was filled with curiosity and fascination but mostly I felt disturbed. It's one thing to study other religions, but watching people bow down before a giant statue was awkward. It's hard to explain...
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This woman was adding a candle to the shrine.
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And then she spent some time bowing.
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Another shrine garden.
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There was another shrine nearby. In the entrace were statues of The Four Heavenly Kings. Each of the kings is a guardian god watching over the 4 cardinal directions of the world. They are quite comical looking. People bowed to these 4 gods as they walked through the entrance.
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And inside the garden was this other shrine of the Buddha. More offerings were made, more bowing, more worshipping.
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So then I decided to hike. As a warm up, I took a short 2 km hike to what's called Biryong Falls. It was an easy hike and the morning air was crisp.
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Not the most impressive waterfall, but still it was nice.
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So then I decided to hike the Ulsanbawi Rock trail. It said 4 km and I figured that would be a nice hike. Besides, the scenery was just gorgeous and I had no other plans than to spend the day in the mountains.

I think it was one of the (if not THE) hardest hike I've ever done. The last 2 km's were stairs--stairs that went straight up! I got pretty far up before I realized I hadn't taken any pictures. So here's one of me at the 2 km mark. I'm just getting ready to take the stairs. I'm already pretty wiped out.
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And so I began again.
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Looking down. But I'm still not even close to the top yet.
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But I made it. This hike was a great achievement. I really wanted to give up.
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But here's the view from the top.
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I found a nice spot to sit and rest and I pulled out my PB&J sandwich and banana. And then I made some friends.

This man wanted to take his picture with me.

And then I became famous on the mountain. It was a chain reaction. People lined up to take pictures with me. I was like a celebrity. I am not joking, I took pictures with about 50 Koreans. One after another they just lined up and had pictures with me.
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After the picture session was finished, these kind folks insisted that I sit and share in their picnic. They were a fun bunch of people but none of them spoke English so we used a lot of motions and then just laughed at each other. I drank about 3 different kinds of whiskey and ate some food that was really gross but I pretended that I liked it.

A friend recently told me about a Korean saying that says "No one is a stranger on the mountain". That has really proven true for me, nearly every time I've gone hiking.
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Picnic food.
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Picnic people.
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And then we started hiking down.
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Down was really hard too!

But beautiful.
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My new friends couldn't speak any English. And they didn't ever ask me my name. I managed to tell them that I was from Chicago. And that...became my name.
When we were hiking down, I was at the front of the group. At one point they all wanted to rest for a minute but I didn't realize it. Suddently I heard people shouting "CHICAGO STOP!!!! HEY CHICAGO!!!! STOP!!!!!" And I turned around and laughed at them.

Here they are catching up to me.
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And here's another picture with some of the ladies.
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So I finished the hike and my body was quivering. It was 4:30pm. I had been hiking since 9:30am. I caught the bus back to the hostel and I melted into my bed and slept for 4 hours. I didn't move at all. And even now I'm still in pain. But it feels so good.

1 comment:

TulipGirl said...

Love the pics!


When we were in Egypt, we met up with a group of Japanese girls. They were taking more pics of our boys than the ancient sites. Kawwaaai!