I managed to get lost on the way to the bus terminal, but with Maria's help, was able to find the terminal and purchase the tickets. At this point, Maria had decided that she'd go with Daniel and I to the park. Since she was visiting family though, she'd already be up north and would just meet us at the bus terminal in Sokcho.
Anyway, long story short - I got the tickets and the next day Daniel and I were off to the Dongbu train station in Daejeon where we encountered no problems whatsoever (thanks to me!). We successfully met Maria at the train station in Sokcho where we took a taxi to our beautiful homestay! Daniel, meanwhile, was obsessed with buying a jacket since he didn't bring his jacket. He didn't bother to check the weather.
I've never felt like I was that great of a writer because I've never been able to describe things very well. I can tell a story like nobody's business, but when it comes to describing...say...a sunset on the beach, or a full moon's reflection on a lake...I can't write anything but cheesy, cliche sentences that have been written many times before. So this is the problem that I'm running into now that I have to describe the mountains in Sokcho. They were gorgeous, beautiful, fantastic, amazing...all the words that describe something that seems completely indescribable.
Since I grew up in California, I was surrounded by mountains. Every time I would look out my window, I would see grandeur. As beauty often does, it filled me with...I almost want to say love! Driving into Sokcho filled me with the same feeling. On the bus, I looked left, and there it was. Seoraksan. I looked to the right, and there was the beach. You really couldn't be in a more perfect place.
Sokcho's beautiful scenery
Taken from a beautiful bridge in Sokcho
One more picture from the bridge
We arrived in Sokcho around 2:00 PM so we had the rest of the day to kill. We walked over a bridge, walked on a jetty, struggled to find Daniel his stupid jacket (but everything was closed since it was Chuseok!), ate Sokcho's famous squid dish (squid stuffed with noodles, pork, seasoning and goodness) and had my first success at a traditional Korean restaurant on this little island where a famous Korean drama was filmed. Did I mention that the weather was absolutely divine? It was actually jacket weather! I was in heaven. Sokcho is my heaven.
Me with the squid that turned out to be pretty delicious
The squid - yummy!
A picture of Maria and I on the jetty in Sokcho
After arriving back at our homestay (a homestay, FYI, is like a hostel, but is actually the person's home), we started looking at hiking trails from the maps that the owner of our homestay had given us.
Where we got our water - it was clean and perfect. The water came from the mountains.
Our fabulous homestay
Fortunately for us, the owner of our homestay was a park ranger for Seoraksan, so we got the inside scoop from him. I had my Lonely Planet out and Maria was looking at the maps (because they were all in Korean). I read aloud from my Lonely Planet a paragraph devoted to the third highest mountain in Korea, Daecheongbong (1708 meters). The paragraph I read said that it would take seven hours to hike up, and seven hours to hike back down. For people slow at math, that's 14 hours. Of hiking. No thank you.
I, of course, saw why this hike would be a ridiculous feat, but Maria and Daniel got super duper excited and said, "Oh! We can do it! Imagine how cool that would be! To hike up the third highest mountain in Korea! WOW!" I was of course thinking, "Well, yeah, that would definitely be cool, but come on, how realistic is this? Fourteen hours of hiking? Up a mountain?" Need I mention that I was the only one to think of bringing power bars, gatorade, a rain coat, or a backpack for the hike? We were totally unprepared for the hike and I seemed to be the only one aware of that fact. Anyway, Maria and Daniel were totally pumped, and while I had my reservations, I, mostly, kept them to myself and went along with the plan. Maria went to go talk to the owner of the homestay, we'll call him Rick because I don't know his name, and asked his opinion about hiking up Daecheongbong. Well he said we could do it, but if we wanted, he'd drive us to a part of the national park where you could only get to by car. If we started hiking from that point, the hike up would only be three hours, and the hike down would only be five hours. And we had to pay him 30,000 won. And be ready to leave the homestay at 6 AM. Everyone was very excited, despite the fact we had to wake up at the buttcrack of dawn. When I say everyone, I mean everyone but me.
That night, we tried to go to bed early, but we stayed up talking till maybe 12:30...this of course did not bode well for a cheery morning. In the morning, I forced everyone (including myself) to eat something (because breakfast is, of course, the most important meal of the day) but the only thing we had was ramen. So we had ramen for breakfast. Yes, I know it's unhealthy, but we had to eat something.
We were ready by 6 AM and we had Rick take us to the convenience store so we could get some lunch for when we got to the top of the mountain. Again, this was my suggestion. Leave it to me to always think about food. We got to the hiking point at 7 AM and we were off.
Okay, I knew that the hike was going to be difficult. I even prayed the night before for God to just let me MAKE IT UP THE MOUNTAIN. I knew I was overweight; I knew I was out of shape; I knew I was sleep deprived. I knew all these things and also knew that because I was overweight, out of shape and sleep deprived, I was going to have a very difficult day.
Friends and family, I was completely unprepared for how difficult it actually was. Every single step of the way was a struggle. And thank god for Rick's bandana, because I was sweating up a storm, despite the cold weather. It really wasn't even hiking - it was rock climbing.
See how vertical I am? Yeah, that's rock climbing.
And more rock climbing...
We had to use ropes to pull ourselves up.
Yes, my smile was forced.
Climb up endless stairs
The endless stairs.
Wanting to die at this point.
And climb up more rocks.
At least they LOOKED like stairs
And...more rocks.
It was like a stair master that just wouldn't quit. And I knew I was in deep you-know-what because I can barely last fifteen minutes on a stair master. I literally took a break about every five minutes.
Another difficult part of the day was the majority of the way up, I was hiking by myself. Maria and Daniel took off (more on this later) and left me by myself because I was so slow. I understand why they left me, but it still made me feel like crap. Korean families taking breaks together would ask me why I was hiking alone. They'd give me food (like peaches, bamboo and nuts) and talk to me while I was struggling to catch my breath and not pass out. Maria and Daniel would wait for me every 25 minutes or so, but once I would catch up to them, they'd take off again. Waiting ten minutes for me was their break. I didn't get such a luxury. I got maybe a minute break, then I just had to keep going. A part of me thinks that the only reason why they waited for me was because I was carrying the gatorade and power bars. But that's just me being pessimistic.
I was dizzy, my legs were burning, I was sweaty, and I wanted to stop hiking. But there really wasn't any other choice. I had to keep going. What was I going to do? Arrange for a helicopter to come pick me up? No way. I had this constant inner monologue going.
"Just another step"
"Okay make it to that tree then you can take a break"
"Come on, Trisha, you can do it"
"YOU CAN DO THIS!"
It was like volleyball progressions all over again. The fantastic thing about this was that just when you think you can't take anymore, you push forward and discover that you can take a whole lot more. That's exactly what happened to me. It turns out that my body can take a lot more than I thought it could.
The way up took us four and a half hours. Daniel and Maria, of course, made it to the top before me. But once I made it to the top, I didn't feel anything. It wasn't a grand victory for me. I made it to the top. So what. I was actually surprised with myself. Here I thought that the whole point of this hike was making it to the top of Daecheongbong. Apparently not. What turned into a hike to the peak turned into a battle of wills, within my self. I proved to myself that I can do anything I set my mind to doing.
As many of you know, I've battled some demons over the years. I've never felt like I was a mentally strong individual. I always felt weak because it took me SO LONG to get over things and to accept things that I had no control over. In a way, I'm still struggling with those demons, but this hike proved to me in many ways that I can get over it if I really want to. I need to give myself more credit. I am strong. So the question remains: do I really want to get over them?
Taking a much needed break.
Finally at the top!
Daecheongbong Mountain - this is what we hiked down.
At the peak, you couldn't see anything. It was so foggy and COLD that after we scarfed down our lunch, we took off again for the rest of the hike. We had planned to spend two hours up there but couldn't because it was so freaking cold.
On the hike down, I was flying. I left Maria and Daniel in the dust. It's like my body kicked into overdrive and was just so excited that it didn't have to climb up any more stairs, that it was like, "let's do this."
The hike down was spectacular. As we made our way down, the fog cleared and we saw the mountains surrounding us. It was amazing. It took my breath, or what breath I had to give, away.
The sun came out and I was in a much better frame of mind!
Isn't it beautiful?
On the way up to the peak, we ran into this girl who wanted to take a picture with Daniel and me. I'm telling you, in Korea, Westerners are famous! So we took a picture with her, no problem. On the way down, we met up with her again and traveled the rest of the way down together. She was SUCH a sweetheart. Her name is Yeon and is probably the nicest person I've ever met in my entire life.
Yeon, during break time :)
Meeting Yeon definitely made the hike a million times better. She doesn't speak English very well, but talked to us in the first place because she wants to learn English so bad! Honestly, if it weren't for her, we would have starved. She brought along cookies and snacks and shared everything with us. Yeon is from Sokcho and is a teacher, but she also makes beautiful jewelry! More on that later.
We didn't get back to the park's entrance until 8:30. Yes, my friends. We hiked for 13 1/2 hours. I think by the sixth hour, my body went completely numb. I didn't feel anything and was mostly hell-bent on getting to the entrance. Since it was Chuseok (which happens on a full moon), the moon helped us see where we were going because none of us (not even me) planned on hiking in the dark. So we didn't have a flashlight. Yeon, however, used her phone and saved us for probably the 10th time that day.
Since Yeon is from Sokcho, she knew the best places to eat. She took us to this restaurant where they serve this special pork dish that we wouldn't be able to find anywhere else but Sokcho.
Pork deliciousness
Eating it with chopsticks was difficult
I look pretty good after a 13 hour hike!
So needless to say, we were all extremely exhausted after the longest day in the world. After dinner, we ate some walnut ice cream (amazing) and went home to our lovely home stay. I showered first (I called shotgun) and promptly went to sleep around 10:30 and didn't wake up until around 10 the next morning. Unsurprisingly, I was sore. Oh my gosh, was I sore. I knew I was screwed because the second day is usually the worst. Since we were going to be in Sokcho for another whole day, I wanted to take advantage of our location and do some more sight seeing / light hiking at the park. I convinced Daniel and Maria (at this point, I felt like they were a couple) that we should go up to the park and look around the main entrance of the park. Since we had driven almost an hour to get to our hiking point the day before, we missed the entrance (where we had to pay a stupid entrance fee, dangit). I consulted my lonely planet and discovered that there's a cable car that could take us up to a mountain in two minutes that would have otherwise taken us another six hours to hike up. There was absolutely no way I was going to attempt to climb up any more stairs, so we opted for the cable car option, which turned out to be pretty great.
Before we got on the cable car, we walked around the park entrance and found a beautiful Buddhist temple, a huge Buddha statue and a lovely little tea room where they gave us some tea (for free!).
Welcome!
This bear with the half moon on his chest actually exists in the park!
Our free tea ceremony!
The almighty Buddha
He's very large.
The temple
The cable car ride was slightly unnerving. When you saw just how high above the ground you were, you couldn't help but think, "Hmmm, I really hope these measly cables won't snap in half and send me plummeting to my death. Though I guess we're up high enough that I'd instantly die. But what if I hit a tree? And just kept hitting branch after branch until I landed in a broken heap under some tree that didn't do me any favors by keeping me alive?"
You get the point.
The path of death
Our lovely cable car
Very happy to be alive in our cable car
Obviously, we made it to the top without any life-threatening incidents, and actually enjoyed Maria Carey's "Hero" on the way up. It still made me sweat a little bit.
The VIEW once we got to the top was absolutely incredible. Again, I'm having one of those moments where I feel I should quote and cite my source because the only way I could even attempt to describe the scenery at the top of the mountain is to plagiarize in some way.
The river that runs from the mountains to the sea
The city of Sokcho
We took a whole bunch of photos and then followed the directions to something we couldn't read in Korean. Ugh, and there were STAIRS. But there weren't that many, so my thighs were okay (though still VERY tight). On a side note, I feel betrayed by my Lonely Planet because no where did it mention what I was about to see. They could have prepared me a little bit, but no - they just mentioned some fortress that was supposedly there. Once we finished climbing the stairs VERY slowly, we discovered what could only be described as a natural playground. It was a playground of rocks! A very HIGH up playground, which I could only too happily climb all over.
Nature's playground.
Yipeee!
My favorite picture! Sokcho in the background.
Beautiful mountains!
What can I say? I'm a bit of a daredevil ;)
Like I said, Lonely Planet didn't mention this at all, which is a bit of a shame. Though it was a wonderful discovery and not ONCE did I feel the soreness of my muscles while I was climbing all over the rocks like a six year old child in search of Easter eggs.
After that adventure, we had made plans to meet Yeon so we could go to a jimjaebang (public bath house). For those of you who have not done their research on South Korea, bath houses are all the rage here. A lot of the bath houses use hot springs to heat the bathing water. I knew I had to go to one and since I generally have no reservations about being naked, I was VERY excited to finally go to one. And who better to go with than Yeon?
We arrived at the bath house called FANTASIA.
FANTASIA, my first jimjaebang!
And MAN, was I excited! Remember how sore my muscles were? The bath house would take care of it! No problem! I was a little apprehensive about getting naked in front of Maria, mostly because she's my co-worker and well, the other reasons should be apparent to those of you who know me VERY well! I was a Westerner and knew I was going to be stared at a lot by all the women in the bath house, which I totally predicted because they STARED. I didn't know what the big deal was. Perhaps it was because my hair was lighter than theirs. I have no idea. But they got a good look. I almost wanted to yell, "TAKE A PICTURE! IT'LL LAST LONGER!" But I didn't. Because they wouldn't understand me anyway.
So we bathed and it was awesome. They had stand up showers lined up along the wall and then places where you sit down and bath. They even had little stools. In the center of the bathing area was what looked like a giant hot tub, but it was split up into three different pools. One of the pools was green and was WAY too hot for me to even attempt to get into, and the other one was normal colored, but was also freakishly hot. The third one was perfect temperature, so I sat in there with Maria for a while in which I took full advantage of the hot water and jets and gave my legs a satisfying massage.
After you bathe (keep in mind Daniel was with us and was bathing with the men in some undisclosed area), they give you these uniforms (I got size XL which was fabulous) that you put on so you can go to the saunas. After you finish bathing, you go into this common room of sorts where there are people everywhere sleeping on the floor. We're all wearing the same clothes, so it actually looks pretty cool. From the common room are about 20 different sauna rooms in varying degrees of temperature. I'm not a really sauna kind of gal. In fact, in the states, I don't go anywhere near them. I don't enjoy breathing wickedly hot air over and over again, but hey. I was in Korea and needed to experience saunas. We went into a sauna that was 80 deg celsius, which is 176 degrees fahrenheit, and played, "who can stay in here the longest." Daniel was the first out, then Maria, then Yeon and I agreed to go out together so that we'd both be the winner. The sauna was like a super hot igloo. It was incredible - I wish I had taken my camera in there but I suppose it's good that I didn't because it would have been broken by my sweat in two minutes flat. Anyway, Yeon and I won, and because we won, we got massages from Maria and Daniel. Maria massaged me (which was pretty painful considering the state of my muscles), and then because I felt bad for her, I gave her a massage with my magic hands.
In the common room, you can also order food and drinks, so after a while we decided to get a snack. While eating, we just sat and talked. It was so much fun. It was probably the best experience in South Korea up until that point. We left the spa around 2 AM and took a taxi back to our home stay.
Shiny and pampered!
As predicted, the next morning I was incredibly sore. It was a soreness unlike anything I'd ever experienced. It was like I had injured myself (turns out, I did, in fact, injure myself). I had to lower myself on the toilet, not bend over and STAY AWAY from all things stairs. In the morning, we had to pack because we were getting ready to leave Sokcho. We had to be out of the home stay by eleven so we took time to make sure our room looked decent and clean.
Okay. I'm super tired. I'll continue this tomorrow. Have fun reading my book! I still have one more day to blog about and A LOT happened that day!
So our last day in Sokcho was amazing, thanks to Yeon, once again. At the jimjaebang, we arranged to meet her for lunch. So she met us at the bus station and then drove us to the fabulous little restaurant right next to the water. The restaurant was really random. It had statues of Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, and the Statue of Liberty, then it had a windmill and a fake horse. It was weird. But it was so much fun. The weather was beautiful, the scenery was amazing and the friends and food was fantastic (how was that for descriptive words?). Really, what more could I ask for? Nothing!
