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[broken link! FIXME] [broken link! FIXME] Yesterday my friend Mr Kim and I went hiking at Duryunsan (두룐산), which is in Haenam County about an hour and a half's drive south of Gwangju. Originally, we'd discussed taking an overnight to Song-i-do, but Mr Kim couldn't do an overnight, so we did this instead.
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After our hike, we drove another 30 minutes to a place called Ttangkkeutmaeul (땅끝마을), which translates pretty literally as Land's End Village. That's because the spot is the southernmost extremity of the Korean mainland. There are thousands of islands scattered in the area farther south, including two large islands, Wando and Jindo, that are connected by bridge – so nowadays Ttangkkeut is no longer the farthest south one can go by car, but historically, Ttangkkeut is the "tip" of the Korean Peninsula.
It was a good day. There were a lot of steep and rocky spots. In Korea, all "up-the-mountain" hiking trails are substantially engineered, but this one included a number of spots where one had to use attached hand-holds, hanging ropes and chains to cling to the sides of pretty steep (not to say sheer) rock faces. I always have a little bit of acrophobia in such situations of exposed heights, but I'm pretty good at just "dealing with it" and pushing along.
So here are some pictures.
I saw some jang-seung (장승 – left and right, above). I love jang-seung – I want to become a jang-seung sculptor in my next career, I think
There was a cheesy stone lion (courtesy Lion's International) at the park entrance.
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Just starting out, we met a group of senior citizens who were starting their day with hefty doses of purple makkeolli (rice beer flavored with some kind of root or flower, I forgot to write down the name).
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They insisted I drink with them, and eat seafood jeom pancakes and kimchi. One has to comply with such requests – it's social obligation. So… two big bowls later (makkeolli is traditionally drunk from bowls, not cups), I began the hike in a bit of a drunken haze.
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At the base of the mountain, there was 대흥사 [dae-heung-sa = Daeheung Temple].
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I saw a scary demon (or was it a portrait of a new member of anger-rap group Insane Clown Posse? Hard to tell…).
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I saw some bodhisattvas (I think they were bodhisattvas) riding on animals.
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I saw Siddhartha thinking about his deceased parents.
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About halfway up the mountain, we found a construction area near a small hermitage (암), affiliated with the temple.
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There was a mysterious backhoe. A construction worker told us he drove it there. But we'd traversed some very rocky and un-drivable paths to get to that point, and so we were sceptical. A monk later told us the construction worker had lied – the backhoe had been delivered with a cargo helicopter.
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There was a cute, but rather grumpy, old temple dog.
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At this hermitage, we found a 미륵 [mi-reuk = Maitreya, which is "future buddha," but also is used to refer to a statue of buddha]. It was a big, ancient one, enclosed in a little temple/shelter structure to protect it from further erosion from the elements. It was really awesome to see. It was my favorite part of the hike.
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The view from a helipad.
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Hints of fall in the foliage.
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A difficult, steep stretch, where I had to hang on a rope and pull myself up through a hole in the rocks.
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Some panoramic views. Pardon the specks of dirt visible on the camera lens. Looking east.
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Looking southeast – toward Wando, I think.
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A summit marker.
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Mountain-top-deep-thinker.
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In this picture, I tried to capture a little bird that Mr Kim told me was rare. You can barely see it, in the lower left quadrant. But I liked the sort of abstract look of the face of rock that the picture captured, so I decided to put it up.
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Here is Mr Kim, in among some trees.
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This is a charming green moth that was lurking on a lavender-colored flower.
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The mountain is supposedly a reclining buddha. So there are multiple peaks: head, belly, feet. I think this is buddha's head, but looking toward the chin from the valley of his neck/chest area.
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Here is a natural stone arch that we went under, after going up some very steep, steel stairs hung on a cliffside.
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Clowning around on said steel stairs.
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Here is Mr Kim, having one of his long conversations with random strangers, that he likes to enjoy. I think he likes to "brag" about his foreign friend, a little bit – I'm kind of a walking, smiling status symbol, for him. I don't mind – he's very intelligent, and, to the extent we succeed in communicating, interesting to talk to. We both learn a lot of each other's respective languages, although we are often just as exhausted, mentally, at the end of the day, as physically.
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A panoramic view from the peak, looking eastish.
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The obligatory top-of-the-mountain victory pose.
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Here are some people we met. I mix up the various groups of hikers we meet. This group, or another one,were a church group who served us kimchi, apples, makkeolli (rice beer) and coffee flavored hard-candies: lunch snack of champion mountain climbers everywhere!
Sharing food in the middle of nowhere is a deeply embedded part of Korean culture, I've come to believe. My friend Mr Kim will literally walk up to just-met strangers and begin a conversation with something like, hey, do you have any kimbap? Or they will greet us with, hey, get over here and drink some makkeolli – and here's some kimchi to go with it.
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A little monk's hermitage (암) we encountered on the way down.
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The painted wooden panels on the temple building at the hermitage were amazing. I love these things, and they're easy to find, all over Korea.
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Two pictures of boats at Ttangkkeut.
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Here is a man parking his boat at a dock where my friend Mr Kim bought an octopus for his wife. That seems like a really romantic Korean thing to do: buy a fresh, wiggly octopus for one's loved one. The fisherman's Korean was incomprehensible to me. And he had a young, Philippine wife standing on the dock, assisting, and her Korean was even worse than mine, and I wondered… how do they communicate? Is communication really even a part of their relationship? It's very common for rural Korean men, these days, to find "foreign brides" – because all the Korean women go to university and go live in the cities, wanting nothing to do with farmers and fishermen. A very interesting cultural phenomenon.
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Here is a tiny scrap of rock with some very Korean-looking trees clambering around on it, just off the coast of Ttangkkeut at the ferry terminal (well, really just a chunk of concrete where the boats can disgorge their vehicles).
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A bright half-moon over a tree and rock at Ttangkkeut, at dusk.
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A big rock that says "땅끝 . 한반도최남단" [ttang-kkeut. han-ban-do-choe-nam-dan = Land's End. Korean Peninsula's Southernmost Column (i.e. column of rock on the beach there, I think)]
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This morning, I awoke at 6:40, which felt decadent, given I normally get up an hour earlier. My legs are a bit sore. There were dumptrucks rumbling, roosters crowing, and goats bleating, outside my window. For breakfast, I had some coffee and some leftover cake that a student's mom gifted me with, last week.