Korea.: 1st Hike: Mt. Songnisan

Our delicious lunch

Lunch stop in the middle of the hike

Made it to the top! exhilarating feeling!

What a view!

Yesterday (Saturday), I took a bus from Pohang to Daejeon then transferred to Boeun to finally visit my friend. I really wanted to hike since hiking is pretty popular in Korea so we decided to hike Mt. Songnisan. This mountain is pretty popular because it has the largest bronze Buddha in the world. A lot of tourists come to see and many Buddhists come to pray.

We did not get there til about 2pm since my bus ride took about 4 hours (I left at 8am!) We did a lot of sight seeing, took pictures, and were really impressed with how pretty everything was. We began our hike at around 3ish. At first we were like, "wow this is just all pavement...it's for tourists... I'm sure this is not going to be that bad...why do all these hikers all look like they have too many equipments?"

Here I like to mention that the old people in Korea are crazy hikers or at least they look like they are. They all have on hiking pants, NorthFace gears, walking sticks, and hiking boots. I guess when they do something here, they do it correctly with the right gears. They also travel in groups of old males or females... like a gang of them of the same gender, wearing almost the same colors and having the same haircuts (especially the ajummas)

Well, we continued our "hike" (it's not really a hike yet since it's just like walking in a park at this point). We stopped for lunch at a rest stop in the middle of the forest (which is nice because you hear the river and all). After lunch was when our intensive hike began. We were hiking up rocks after rocks. It was super steep and it just seems like it would never end. Our goal was to reach Mundangjae Rock (we did not know it was 3000feet high). My thighs were really dying but we had to reach the top since it was too far to go back. Also, we were afraid that if we don't hurry, we will be lost in the forest when we go down.

Well we got to the top and it was amazing!!! It was really worth the pain and the sweats. There were mountains everywhere and you can no longer see buildings or cars... just mountains! It really rejuvenated us. We took a few pictures and hurried down. My knees are still in pain because of yesterday... the hike down was faster but pretty ruthless on the knees.

On the way down, it got pretty dark and luckily we met a man on the way. We were the last few people on that trail. He talked to us a bit and my friend used the most of his broken Korean to have a conversation with him. The man had a flashlight so we just followed him out to the main gate. We were glad when he offered us a ride back to my friend's place. It was getting super cold and we would have had to take the bus then walk if he didn't offer us a ride. We were cold and in pain so we would take any ride... haha (In general, we heard it's pretty safe in Korea).