Left Seoul and this time instead of going South and West, the two usual directions I seem to take when getting out of a city, we went East. And North. Michele, Maranda, and I went with a group through Meetup (my first time hearing about this social networking site) to Dootasan Mountain about five hours outside of Seoul. A first for me was meeting at midnight, taking a bus, "sleeping" on the bus, and start hiking as soon as we get off. I'm not sure anyone is actually capable of sleeping on a bus. Regardless, after resting our eyes and trying out every sleeping position possible when you're upright at a 105 degree angle while the person next to you is coughing, we stumbled off at our destination circa. 4:30 and were hiking before 5. It was only about a 12 km hike, but the first five km were straight up in a dense fog. I'm sure we missed out on some amazing scenery, but hiking in a cloud was so much fun. You see pictures all the time of Asian mountain shrouded by mysterious mist and getting to be in the thick of that was amazing. By the time we reached our first breaking stop we were all drenched. The summit must always be in this kind of weather because at the top we found pools of water with dozens of frogs hopping about and thick, heavy carpets of green moss grew on the surface of nearly every rock and tree. The way down was more painful than the way up simply because the wetness had turned the ground into a treacherous, slippery, slide of dead leaves and mud. There were pools of icy, spring water near the bottom but only Andrew was brave enough to actually take a dip. The rest of us just wanted to be dry and continued along familiar, rope railed paths. A giant Buddha welcomed us at the parking lot but I was so tired (and oh so dirty) that I gave it a nod of greeting, threw my back pack down, and took a nap.
We spend the night at Mang Sang beach on the coast of the Sea of Korea in a pension. The weather remained grey and foggy but I took great delight in hearing the sound of waves and smelling the fishy, salty air that hovers around every ocean town. On Sunday we made a pit stop at the park known as Penis Park where we wandered around phallic totem poles and masturbating statues. We found a gorgeous stretch of beach with some freakishly big sand crabs but couldn't stay long. Our final stop was in Samcheok where we traversed underground in some giant caves before returning to Seoul by 11PM. I returned dirty. I returned with hat hair. I returned messy, messy, messy. But I returned rejuvenated.
Pictures to follow as soon as Michele posts them and my nimble fingers steal them.
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