Rafting and Deokjeok-do

August 15th was Korean independence day, and we had no school, so Brady and I, along with our friends Enda, Una, and Tara went rafting.  We went back to the place Brady and I had gone at the end of July.  We drove up Tuesday night and camped near the rafting place.  It was raining pretty steadily, but Brady and I have a tarp so we set up a shelter where people could hang out without getting wet.  On Wednesday we headed to the rafting place around noon.  It only takes two hours to get down the river, so we started in the early afternoon.  It was the same route that we did last time, but much, much rainier.  It was pretty warm out, but I still got a little cold after a while.  I couldn't believe how heavily it was raining.  When we were done they let us take hot showers, then we got some lunch and headed home.

Last weekend we went to an island called Deokjeok-do.  "Do" means island in Korean, so if it's at the end of the name of a place you know it's an island.  Deokjeokdo is about 50km off the west coast.  We had to leave early Saturday morning to catch the 8:30am ferry.  We went with Brady's college friend Stefan, who lives in Seoul, and his co-worker Tyler.  The island is fairly big, but not many people live there and it's not very built-up.  We were able to camp right near the beach, in some trees, and there didn't seem to be anyone else camping around.  When we arrived it was starting to get windy and rainy, and the sky looked ominous.  Again, we had the tarp so we set up a shelter and had lunch under it.

  Then the weather got a bit clearer and we went for a hike.

The hike took a couple hours, and was nice.  There was a big group of Koreans at the top having a picnic.  They have elaborate picnics.  They'll bring stoves, even just on a day trip, and cook a bunch of food, drink some makgeolli, really go all out.  And they always want to share.  That's one of my favorite parts about Korea, is how people always want to share their food and drink and snacks with you.  These people gave us each a shot of this stuff they called wine, but it tasted more like brandy, and ddeok.  Ddeok is...it's hard to explain.  It's a dessert, and it's sort of chewy pasta stuff made of rice, filled with something sweet or nuts.  I think it's gross, but I nibbled on it to be polite.



After the hike the weather was really nice, so we hung out on the beach for a few hours....

And watched this guy ride his bike into the ocean...

Then we made dinner on the beach. 

Today, August 28th, school was canceled because there's a typhoon coming through.  I asked several people if school in Korea ever gets canceled, and they said never.  It was supposed to be the worst in Suwon around 3-4, but it's 4:40 right now and it's been really mild.  I'm disappointed because I like big storms, but I'm really happy we got a surprise day off from school. 

Seoraksan

The last weekend in July was our summer vacation, which meant two days off work, for a four-day weekend.  We went to Inje to go rafting on Saturday, in the Naerincheon River.  Rafting in Korea is pretty mild compared to what we've done in the past (mostly what Brady's done, really.)  It's illegal to go rafting if the difficulty level gets too high, so we were in about 2+ rapids.  It was still really fun, it's just nice to be out on the river.  They gave us an English-speaking guide, and it turns out he's worked as a rafting guide in Idaho, and is going to college in Colorado.  He just finished up his first year there.  He's big into white water kayaking, so he and Brady were able to talk about all the rivers and rapids they both know in Colorado.

That night, after rafting, we stayed in Inje, then left the next morning to go hiking in Seoraksan National Park.  It had been very hot, so I was a little bit worried about that, but we were in the shade almost the whole time.  There's a shuttle bus from the entrance of the park to a Buddhist temple about 7.5km in, but we decided to walk it instead of taking the bus. There's always a temple in these parks.  Temples in Korea are always in the most beautiful locations.  I know that there are temple stays available, where tourists can go and live like a monk for a couple days.  I've heard that it's not very fun.  You wake up super-early and meditate for hours and hours.  I think you have to go through a lot of boredom and impatience before you can find that peaceful and rewarding.  So we walked to the temple, filled our water bottles, built a rock pile, then continued up the mountain.  

The trail was really beautiful, and most of the way was along a little stream.  There were emerald pools of water every so often.  It was hot, and after seeing some Koreans go swimming we stopped to swim too.  Koreans swim fully clothed, so we did too.

Towards the end of the day we were mildly regretting not taking the shuttle bus at the beginning of the day, because in all we did around 20km, and the end was quite steep.  We had made a reservation for a hut right by the summit.  The day we made the reservation, two weeks in advance, we were on the website the minute it became available, and it's good, because the spaces sold out in under two minutes.  In a country of 50 million people, 120 beds in a shelter on a Sunday night sell out fast.  The hut was about a 20 minute walk to the summit, so our plan was to wake up early, go to the summit, and make coffee and watch the sun rise.  It would have been so nice and peaceful.

There were a lot of people on the trail, but no other foreigners.  Foreigners are rare, but I think this was the first time we didn't see any at all, besides us.  There was a father and daughter hiking together, and we kept seeing them, and passing them.  The daughter was probably 19 or 20.  She was so excited to see us, she'd smile and wave every time.  Finally, the next day, we stopped for a break at the same place as them, and she asked us where we were from.  We told her, then she said "let's take a picture!"  So her father took a picture of us with this girl.  Maybe she wanted proof that she'd met real Americans.

The night we stayed at the shelter, the wind was incredible.  It was howling so loud it woke me up a few times, and shaking the building.  There were a bunch of people who had hiked up there without reservations, hoping for a bed to open up, but when it didn't they had to sleep outside on these platforms.  They were rolled up in plastic wrap to shield from the rain, but they couldn't have gotten much sleep, if any.

The next morning we wanted to go to the summit to watch the sun rise, but the wind was still blowing harder than any wind I've ever experienced, and we were completely fogged in.  We snapped a few pictures at the summit, then headed down.  It was much steeper on the way down, and only 5 kilometers.  That night we stayed in Osaek, which is a town with a lot of hot springs.  Our hotel advertised itself as a hot springs hotel, which we thought meant there would be a sauna there.  It just meant that the water from the faucets was supposedly heated by hot springs, but it came out weak and tepid.  But we went to a hotel nearby that had a sauna and spent a couple hours there.  It was a nice town, and I think it really picks up in the peak tourist season.  There were a lot of restaurants and shops along a little stream that runs through the town, so we had dinner at one of them, then headed home the next day.