james new brain

SOUTH KOREA – 2007.09.23 – DAY27

Gyungju/Busan Vacation Post 5 of 9

Today we rose early to get some hiking in. There are not only temples in the area, but a big mountainous area with tons of trails and historical relics scattered throughout.

We took a bus out to a parking lot where many trails begin, and decided to hike to a statue formation depicting Seven Buddhas. It was a few kilometers away, with a kilometer of elevation gain, so it wouldn’t be terribly difficult. And, we’d get a very scenic walk through farm land villages to even reach the trailhead.

I snapped this wraparound-book-cover pict on our walk to the trail head.

It was also pretty rainy off and on over the course of the day, so that would help with keeping the number of folks we would see on the way down. We ended up only passing one other group on the entire hike, excluding some farmers in the fields on the way to the hikes start.

A pond we passed on the walk to the hike. There were REALLY pretty buildings the whole way out, spaced out by fields.

Also, cute puppies were running around. (Hopefully these little guys weren’t just being raised to make dog stew..)

Ryo/Gollum follows along. Oh, the hike has started now.

We started hitting some real elevation gains as rain started pouring. But we were in these cool Bamboo shoots! (Photo by AMY DELAHANTY…I borrow a number of her photos in this post because they ended up being way to cool)

This one’s mine, though. Hannah, Silvia, Ryo, and the bamboo.

This give you a sense of the step-height? Shit got difficult.

Suddenly, the trail opened up, and we were there. A cliff side with the two pieces of the 7 Buddhas right on top.

Three on the back piece, two on each side and two on the front of the front piece. They look out over the cliff down the mountain range.

The strangest part was that at the top, along with the 7 Buddhas and the great view, there was this little temple with a monk there to serve us coffee and some potatoes…

A wider view of the full cliffside: Buddhas, and temple, with us drinking coffee. What the heck? We just walked an hour through very rural Korea followed by a kilometer straight up rocks, and all this is up here?

The potatoes, and the monk. See? (Photo by AMY DELAHANTY)

Another of Silvia’s panoramas. This one shows the view. Click to enlarge once the page has finished loading. (Photo by SILVIA RIEGLER-HEISSENBERGER)

(Photo by AMY DELAHANTY)

(Photo by AMY DELAHANTY)

“Rea-day to rolllll out.”

So regarding this picture: On the walk down the mountain, me, Ryo, Hannah, and Jelly played this word association game where you say a word and the next person uses that word to connect to his own thought, etc. This picture shows our hard earned moment of victory: for closing this very difficult circle……

zodiac, killer, whale, rider, ride-or-die, hard, on, top, heavy, metal, gear, shaft, who’s the man?, down, town, hall, Hall comma Anthony Michael, Myers, Myers comma Oscar Weiner, dog, pack, the bowl, Bowling for Columbine, Columbine killers, killer comma zodiac.

Yea we cheated on those last couple, but how else can you end up on Zodiac? doomed from the start…

Anyway, here’s another picture of a puppy, this time on the way down.

(Photo by AMY DELAHANTY)

Um, this one by AMY DELAHANTY knocks my socks off.

Next stop: Busan.