Leg 24: Hupo Harbour to Giseong Bus Terminal

Hupo Harbour showed me what would likely be coming as I travel up the coast. Gangwondo looms on the horizon and that is Korea's playground, in many ways. And it is getting on to the tourist season. Korea is not immune to the tourism disease known as tourist gouging. I suppose I could have found a place to stay that would have been a reasonable price, if I had been willing to stroll away from the harbour area. But I was too tired to really have a go at that, so I chose a place in the harbour area. But it cost me. Sigh!! And this will likely continue as I get further north. I'll have to think about where I might want to stay for my nights as I go farther along. Luckily there isn't really that much to go.

Hupo has a fair headland right at the edge of town. There is a good viewpoint from the top...

...as well as a lighthouse.

It was early...

There were some interesting sights in and around town. I saw some women doing some fishing, although it looked more involved than just a rod and reel.  The frog women of South Korea perhaps?

There were lots of murals on walls.

Then it was off and along the coast again. It seemed that it was a season to be harvesting form the sea. There were some kind of little fish.

And lots of seaweed.

 

I'm not sure, but I wonder if this couple ever debates whether it's more interesting to watch paint dry or the seaweed. Probably the seaweed since they get a nicer view from the couch.

I passed a town with this fancy-looking place to stay. “Come stay with us!!! Big windows with every room!!! Ocean views!!!”

“Even while you take a bath!!” Hmmm... If I can see out to the view while I'm taking a bath, won't that mean... “Hey Martha... Why is everyone pointing at our window and laughing?”

There was a nice temple...

...with a nice view.

And more construction that modifies the coast. This looked to be construction of a new seawall for a new harbour.

I was even Dokdo'ed. There are some islands between South Korea and Japan. Both countries claim them. Currently South Korea has a presence on them and has pressed some international court to rule them as belonging to Korea. Their Korean name is Dokdo. Koreans have displays all over, usually with some kind of sculpture of the islands (and they are barely islands; really just more or less barren rocks sticking out of the sea between Korea and Japan), and some kind of statement that Dokdo is Korean territory. The point of all these displays is to promote the idea that Korea owns the rocks. I wish they would leave non-Koreans out of it, as most of really don't care/have no idea of what this dispute is about. This display was quite large, with a big sculpture taking up a chunk of the waterfront real estate.

The final part of the leg before I headed back to Seosan was along the coast, where I saw yet another female diver/fisherwoman, this time in a wetsuit, as the trail headed around a little point and into Giseong.

Some final views of the coast led me into town and to the bus station that served as the end point of the leg. I arrived as a bus pulled up, and it was probably the bus I wanted. But I still didn't have a ticket and it left without me. Luckily, the buses came by every 30 minutes, so I didn't have long to wait. However, I bought a ticket for Daegu. I did that not knowing that the buses that came through this station were milk-run buses, stopping in every little town along the way. I suspect the kid who sold me the bus ticket knew this. He might have told me that I would have better success getting to Daegu in good time if I bought a ticket to Yeongdeok and then continued on a regular bus. But he either saw no need, or couldn't be bothered trying to communicate it to the foreigner. Luckily the bus driver noticed that I was still on the bus along the way and transferred me to a better bus in Pohang.

But instead of leaving off on that sour note, I'll leave off with this guy instead.

Leg 23: Goraebul Beach to Hupo Harbour

 

Continuing on from Goraebul Beach, it was just a short little leg of about 10 kilometres. Unfortunately it was also one of those just-get-through-it-to-get-to-a-better-leg legs. It was a lot of road walking, walking through towns and behind seawalls that were too high to see over to the sea. It was rather uninspiring scenery.

I did see a newer kind of motel that has been popping up in Korea. It's called a moointel (how it sounds). It seems to be a kind of motel where you can drive into your own garage. Seems kind of interesting.

While it was a lot of roadside walking, towards the end the trail went back by the coast in a way that allowed for views.

And while the leg as a whole was a bit of a disappointment, there was a nice bit of news at the end. When I found the end point sign, I found that I have now got more of the trail behind me than there is left to hike. Yay!!!

Leg 22: Chuksan Harbour to Goraebul Beach (Whale and Clean Beach)

After a couple of weeks of being in Seosan and Seoul, I headed back out to the trail. I took the bus to Daegu on the Friday night, which was very convenient if not incredibly helpful in the end because of the distance still to travel to get to the start point. Saturday morning still held a two and a half hour journey, with three different buses, and through Pohang anyway. Oh well. The trip to Daegu was convenient. Ha ha!!

On the other hand, having left off at a bus stop on the previous leg (even though there was once again no sign to mark the actual end of the leg), it was easy to get to the start point once I was in the neighbourhood. Yay!!

Arriving at said bus stop, I headed off and straightaway up a hill and into the woods along the shore. Part way up, there was nice view of the town down below.

It was a nice way to begin the leg. It also showed how much spring had arrived in the two weeks between visits to the trail. Flowers were everywhere, and all the trees were green. I kind of expected to see lots of visitors on the trail this weekend as the weather had turned quite nice and they love their hiking in Korea. But there were still very few people along the way. It may have had something to do with all the dust in the air. Every spring, the winds kick up and a bunch of the Chinese desert flies up and into the atmosphere, with a fair amount of it landing in Korea. The air quality gets quite iffy, with a haze covering much of the landscape. The evidence of that desert can be seen in puddles after rain, with a film of yellow muck around the edges. (Of course, in the time I have been doing this trail, I also have come to think that Korea contributes a fair amount to the air quality as well. However, the yellow dust is certainly from the Chinese desert.)

At the end of the first part of this leg, I came upon a little exhibition area. I think some historical scholar lived in this area some hundreds of years ago and this was the site of his home or perhaps his library. And it was just sitting out there in the woods, at the end of a road some distance from town. There were sorts of audio-visual equipment and displays inside, along with a guest book. And not a soul manning the place. This is one of the most interesting aspects of Korea. I'm sure there were some kind of monitoring CCTV cameras in place, but this would be so in North America as well. And such a setup would never survive long in North America for being at the very least vandalized, and probably robbed as well. But this spot was sitting in this clearing, completely unmolested. Good on you, Korea.

Then it was back to the shoreline and beaches. Something I noticed on this trip was a great deal of water. In the past three years, Korea has been in a drought. But this year it seems to have broken. There is water in the rivers and streams again, something I haven't seen a lot of in the past couple of years. And the ground is damp for a long time after the rain. Before this spring, it might rain, but an hour or so after the rain stopped, the ground would look bone dry again. It is good to see damp ground days after a rain. Maybe the drought is over.

 

What hasn't changed is Korea's penchant to destroy the charm of coastline. I had come into what they were calling the Whale and Clean Beach Road. That makes it sound pristine and lovely, a place one can go and see shore birds, clean beaches, beautiful vistas, and a nice natural area.

And then they decided to do this...

It's hard to decide what it will be, but Korea has recently begun to get into a glamping craze. I suspect these will be nice campsites, with all a “camping” family might need, from tent to barbecue area, and eventually a nice view, although currently the shore view is obscured by a set of dunes.

Now I can't really cast stones and say that Koreans are the only ones guilty of this. Authorities near my hometown of Calgary are trying to prevent people with recreational ATVs from destroying a natural area by the mountains, people who really don't seem to care that the natural area is suffering. But in an area they are touting as clean and natural, to put this kind of glamping site in is asking for the pristine area to become degraded. And my time in this country has shown how little regard Koreans have for what they do with their trash. I suspect this Whale and Clean Beach area will not remain so for much longer, unfortunately.

But for now, the views along the beach are really quite nice.

And as I reached the end of the leg, I found that they take the trail more seriously in the Yeongdeok area. They want trekkers to be able to stay on the trail and find things like transportation. There were new markers to be seen, markers on the ground, indented instead of just painted, pointing the way. (It is fairly apparent, however, that they really only consider one direction for the trail, as these markers mostly only point one way.) The end of the leg had signposts pointing the way to a nearby bus stop. Things are looking up for knowing what I need to know to get to and from the trail as I get farther north.