Taking the bus to Gyeryongsan national park to go hiking in the fog
Today I spent many hours hiking in fog. The actual place was called Gyeryongsan national park, which is located a short bus ride to the west of downtown Daejeon. For most of the day it would not matter where I was, the only view was fog.
Because of the popularity of hiking in Korea, I thought it best to go before the weekend, I had read stories about people hijacking buses on weekends because they had to wait in line for so many hours to get on the bus that there was now no point in going. I did not want to be that person, or did I???
My bus ride went very smoothly, long term readers may recall that me and buses do not get along, the worst memory I have is when in Japan they just decided to not run a bus service at all one day because they did not think anyone would be needing it. The one regular rider had died of old age. I found that out after a 20km walk and questioning the guys at the bus depot. Anyway, here in Korea the bus runs every 20 minutes, is over flowing with people, and the bus stops have cool TV screens keeping you appraised of where the bus is in real time.
Once at the national park, I sneakily had done my homework, and knew which way to go to avoid the $4 entry fee. Actually I selected a long looping path rather than the main path, which means you come out through the entrance and despite offering to pay when I exited, that seemed to cause all kinds of trouble and they wanted me to talk to someone on the phone who understood English. I think they thought I was demanding a refund?
One other thing, Korean maps are hopeless. North is never up. The map is also rarely oriented in the direction you are facing. I truly believe when they draw a map in Korea someone has a giant wheel of fortune and they spin the map on it and decide to draw it oriented wherever the wheel stops. I saw other people on the trail twisting their head upside down and placing their phone on the map. Just make up North you idiots! I stopped looking eventually, at one point I thought I had gone back in the direction I had come from because a map was rotated 180 degrees. OK I have had my say on maps.
I had to change from the subway to a train at a very cold, very windy location famous for its hot spring foot spa. It was concerning that it was so cold and windy, I had elected to hike without my coat today because on all previous hikes I carried it the whole way, and today was forecast to be warmer.
My bus, a 7-eleven, and a bit of fog.... nothing too bad.... Bloody cold though, better get moving.
If you are reading this wanting to do the same loop course that I did, or you just want to avoid the $4 entrance fee, TURN RIGHT HERE.
It started to look like rain at this point, I was getting concerned, wet and freezing might be bad! I went to see the local evil high priest for advice.
I decided to sit and ponder the weather with these 2 cats in the local Ediya coffee shop. In addition to cats they had a sewing and knitting corner and a library. Ediya is not some small boutique store, its a national chain like Starbucks.
The scenery was not great, but I decided to set off into what looked like rain.
The path at first was rewardingly rocky. My poor shoes are wearing out fast clamouring over all this granite. Every Korean hiking trail is sharp granite.
Fog ahead! Fog ahead! I am sure it will pass in a few minutes.
DENSE FOG.
Here are some pagodas, they have real historical significance. Trust me.
Here in the fog somewhere is a snack bar and outdoor seating to enjoy the view.
Thinking back to the tiger eating some guys brother story from a couple of days ago, I was thrilled to see that on this mountain you can ride your tiger around and get him to attack monks.
After a lot of ascending in the fog, the ascent got too steep and needed vertigo inducing stairs. It never rained despite constantly looking like it was.
Behold the view! This is the first of many views. They call all the peaks the roosters comb. Lots of mountains claim to have a roosters comb. There was no view, just white.
I enjoyed carefully going along the ridge between the peaks. It probably looked much more dangerous than it was due to the fog.
I made this peak look much more precarious than it was. But OK, I had to scale up here like a pro rock climber, hoisting myself up hand over hand, during a thunderstorm in a gale force wind.
My brave rock climbing exploits got me to the main peak, what a view!
A really nice spot to sit and enjoy the view, I imagine.
After appreciating the wonderful view, it was time to descend in the fog, carefully.
Is it actually getting worse?
And then, I heard oohs and ahhs from above, birds started chirping, and the fog disappeared, suddenly! Just minutes after I had left the summit area.
The path down was very nice looking without the fog.
It might still look foggy to you, but to me it looked crystal clear. I now realised the cliffs were steep.
Here you can even see a bit of blue sky and sunshine, if you squint hard.
And then I was back down, and entering the Buddhist temple through the back entrance, enjoying the fluro lanterns in brilliant bright sunshine.
Nice shot of the temple and the mountains in the distance, thats now smog not fog. Also earlier I saw a dog.
The main entrance to the Buddhist amusement park has lots of junk to buy.
I think that is the first peak I hiked over much earlier in the day, in the fog.
The road back to the bus stop was lined on both sides with shops selling questionable goods and services. Scissors that can cut through a shoe, tarot card readings. Why would you want to purchase kitchen scissors on your way to go hiking? I guess you never know when you might need to cut through a shoe.
Look at the blue sky!
And for my last photo, its basically the same as one of the first photos, taken in the same spot to show the difference. Actually it doesnt look all that different, the camera hides the truth. At this point it was blindingly bright, at the start of the day it was almost dark.
Wandering around Yuseong Spa to eat mandoo
I walked away from what I thought was the main part of the city and found a nicer part of the city. This part of the city is very far from the train station, and about a km or so from the subway line, and yet it seems very modern.
Apparently Daejeon is the silicon valley of Korea, although that could just be wishful thinking by the local mayor. They do seem to have the main campuses for both LG and Samsung somewhere far, far away on the city edge for some reason. This evening I thought maybe I was there, but the map tells me I was at completely the wrong end of the city for that to be the case.
My travels took me through a few different nice looking suburbs, all with the numbered monolithic blocks of white concrete apartments, some of which are made by Samsung and LG. Eventually I got to what is apparently the number one tourist attraction of Daejeon, the foot spa. It is a kilometre or so of outdoor little pools of water at different temperatures, with areas set up between the pools for entertainment. I saw an orchestra playing, some K-pop dancers, sad saxophone, people trading their dogs, political rallies, you name it there was a foot spa pool for it.
Apparently the foot spa pools are not without drama, you need to properly wash your feet in a drain pool before you can stick them in a hot pool. Even visiting Koreans do not know this etiquette, and it has caused a number of fights between warring factions of feet soaking elderly citizens. Possibly with one drowning.
My first pic of the late afternoon come courtesy of a convenient highway overpass. As usual I have selected a course that sees me walking directly into the blinding sun. Those are however the mountains that were covered in fog as I was climbing today that you can see here in the distance.
Here are some numbered apartment blocks. I believe they are actually quite nice. Certainly the bottom 3 or 4 levels of every single one are shops and restaurants.
So many blossoms. 2 shades of white and a bit of yellow. Yes I know the horizon is not level in this shot.
My walk took me across at least 4 rivers such as this, all had nice walking / bike riding trails. I wanted to go running along them.
Eventually I could not resist and went down to go along the path. Great light here.
This is just an example of a nice street in Daejeon, in an area I was not expecting to see too much at all.
And here is another nice street, this one has hiking gear shops all the way along it.
I think I have taken a photo of this sign on a previous trip. They play some interesting sports here. In Japan you can get cream filled kolon.
And here is an example of the foot spa area. One of the brown signs above the road referred to it as 'foot spa world theme park'.
You might recall last night I did not photograph my dinner due to it being street food requiring both hands and to eat standing up. I did try to make up for it with a photo of the pancakes that I ate, but to really make up for it, tonight there are 2 photos of my dinner! Part one, cheap bibimbap. It had a lot more vegetables than you normally get. I suspect thats because its cheap, but actually I wanted the extra vegetables.
Part 2 was some mystery meet dumplings. I clearly over ordered but gave it my best shot. This place was one of countless almost identical little restaurants underneath the giant apartment blocks, plastic tables and terrible lighting. They have no English menu and no English speaking skills. No problem, I waved at Auntie, and we went out the front and I pointed at the pictures on the window. I got what I wanted.
Last photo for tonight is one I promised last night. This is what all the streets near my hotel look like. They are generally all hotels of questionable moral standing, bars, massage places, karaoke lounges and of course restaurants. Nearly all the restaurants are bbq and you cant really do that on your own. Now I will go to sleep, early.