Youngchisan Mountain

The weekend of April 16th Casey, Megan, Alison and I joined another 70+ people to head down south to Yeosu. We left at around 11:30pm the night of April 16th and drove through the night till we arrived at Youngchisan at 5:30am. We began our hike just as the sun was rising and a quarter of the way up we were able to see the beautiful sunrise. The beginning of the hike was extremely intense and directly up hill but after awhile it tapered off. We spent the morning/afternoon hiking through the hills of the mountain stopping for a coffee break, snacks, photos of the lovely pink azaleas, and popping into a few temples buried away in the mountain.
We spent the rest of the day visiting Odongdo Island, Suncheon Bay, and finally ending our night a quite nearly isolated beach. Our visit to Odongdo Island was a nice relaxation after our five hour hike; it was covered with red camellia flowers. We strolled around the island taking pictures of the flowers and took a relaxed to the sound of the waves crashing on the big boulders. Continuing on with our day the bus took us to Suncheon Bay to visit one of five, Koreas most preserved natural swamp land. Unsure as to what we were going to see exactly I was shockingly surprised at how beautiful it was. There is a nice walking path along the swamp lands and once we crossed over the swamp land we could hike up this mountain to see the sun slowly beginning to set as well as a 180 view of the swamp land. Although I was tired, exhausted and wanting to get to our final destination this was a very nice ending to the day. It was a good final stretch after a long day of hiking plus I had never really seen a swamp land before, at least not to my knowledge. By about nine in the evening we finally arrived to the beach where we were going to spend the night. Spent from the long day I had very little energy to cook dinner or take back a beer. Although a few others enjoyed the beef, pork and beer our guide purchased for us I opted to pass and headed straight to bed.
Warren, our tour guide, wasn’t lying when he said this beach was nearly isolated because after a decent nights rest me and several others spent the morning relaxing on the quite beach. This beach has proper sand to walk in with your naked feet and it was amazing doing just that. After our few hours of drinking coffee, reading, chatting and letting the sand fall through our fingers we boarded the bus and headed to Jirisan Ssanggyesa. Jirisan Ssanggyesa is famous for its long strip of cherry blossom trees. Usually during the month of April all the cherry blossom trees in Korea bloom and when they do it is the most beautiful thing ever; it even turns Seoul, this missive overly compacted city, into a white wonderland. While we were in Jirisan Ssanggyesa we walked around its market and this market set off the beginning of my new purchase obsession. Korea is apparently famous for its pottery and this market has a large selection of pottery, most of it being tea cups and tea sets. These ceramics are gorgeous and if I could I would have bought hundreds of dollars of this stuff but sadly I only had about 15 dollars on me so I simply bought three different tea cups. Since I still have 10 more months here I will just slowly build up my collection of Korean pottery, how I will get it all home, is another issue.