On Saturday September 11, we took our first venture into real (rural) South Korea. Not that Cheonan feels fake, it’s just a lot like America.
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| Matthew |
Our goal was to hike a 19-km trail that ran from the visitor center (and beginning of the seawall) to the next biggest coastal city of Gyeokpo. I think we exceeded that when we got lost. We left Cheonan at 5:30 a.m., nearly five hours earlier than either of us had woken up since settling into our new home.
We meant to be in our destination city of Buan at 11:00. After two separate bus rides, we managed to do that. It had rained the whole way down, so all we could do was hope that it might stop to give us a good day of hiking. In Buan, we met up with some other hikers from Matthew’s travel group. There were seven of us. We hopped in a couple of taxis and made for the start of our trail.
Our hike had three parts:
First came the scenic route. We walked upon the shores of Yellow sea (inside the sea wall) for the first hour or more.
After leaving the beach, we began to hike the hills that ran along the coast. This was probably the most interesting part. At first glance, we saw that the fence we were walking next to was made of barbed-wire. Clearly this path had not originally been for hiking. Higher up in the hills, we found many semi-camouflaged cement posts, which we could only assume were meant for men to shoot from. And we saw them every hundred feet.
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We also saw a Tiger army outpost on another beach later on. Just to the right of the picture were soldiers manning what looked like a .50 caliber gun.
The last part was the longest, as we got lost in the midst. With the rain returning, and remaining relentless, we decided not to hike the next hill. The red clay had turned slippery, and the trail would get steep. So we took the civilized trail, the roadway. Little did we know, the signs we had been following the entire time would cease when we left the hills. Enter rural South Korea.
