Last Day in Byeonsan Bando

After we left Jikso Waterfall in the midafternoon sometime, we were only a few kilometers from the park entrance. The plan was to hike back towards the entrance, via the path we had seen on the way to Jikso, and get close enough to make leaving the park the next day an easy task. This would allow more time to make sure we got to the bus station in Jeonju in time to catch a bus home. Kent could take any number of buses going to his area of Korea, but there are only four buses to Ulsan from Jeonju, and they stop early--the last one is at 5:00.

Things didn't work out quite as we had wanted, though. The trail back to the entrance was so easy that it only took about an hour to finish it. Furthermore, we couldn't find any camping spots along the way. Although the trail was flat, all the area around it was at a steep incline, or too densely wooded, or too close to the main trail. We saw a tiny trail going downward, and took it, thinking it would lead us to a field we could kind of see below. It just led us to a road on the border of the park. After walking along that road for a few minutes, we found we were at the entrance we were trying to avoid getting to that day.

Going back into the park seemed like bad idea by then, since we might not find a spot by dark. The best option at this point was to go to Seokpo Camping Park, which had been our backup plan in the event we could not find a place to camp. So we walked back toward the road we took to get to the park originally, and found the entrance.

Although we had passed the camping park on the way to the park the day before, we didn't look past the sign. One would expect there to be a road leading into the park, with some sort of entrance booth along the way, leading to what we think of as a camping park, with places to pitch tents or park RVs (I doubt they have those here, though), small buildings for bathrooms, etc. We found something entirely different, though.

The sign pointed into the base of what looked like an elementary school playground. The school was on the far end of the playground. Instead of a road, though, there was a military-style obstacle course. Passing by, I had seen it, but had assumed it was playground equipment and didn't give it more than a cursory glance. It seemed like the camping park wasn't a public park, but a military facility. There went that idea.

The only option now was to get a motel. I had seen one as we had walked through Gomso, so we continued our trek back into town. We ended up spotting a nicer looking motel than the one I saw, perched at the end of a small peninsula, so we went there. It was quite expensive for a small-town motel: 70,000 won (about $70). The place was relatively nice, but small, and the bedspread smelt like mothballs, which made the whole place smell like mothballs. We had a balcony, but of course it looked back into the town. We did not get a view of the water.

Completely exhausted, we just ate supper from what was left of our camping food instead of going to a restaurant. The next day we slept until ten. I was still pretty wiped out, having not gotten any sleep on Friday night. But we made our way out of the motel and to the bus stop to start the trip home.

We waited for the city bus for about 15 or 20 minutes, and it was about 30-40 minutes to get to the Buan bus terminal. The bus didn't actually drive into the terminal, but the driver told us where to get off. We didn't really know where we were, so we got a little lost and had to ask a taxi driver where the bus terminal was. As it turns out, we just had to walk about a couple hundred feet the left of where we were dropped off, but we had gone straight, because there was a long line of buses parked along the street there.

Once in Jeonju, I was told that the two remaining buses to Ulsan that day were full, and the next bus didn't go out until 9 the next morning, which wouldn't get me back to Ulsan in time for work. I almost flipped out for a minute there, but then the lady said there was a bus at 3:00 to Busan, which is the nearest big city to Ulsan. From there I was able to easily get a bus home. They go every ten minutes.

So that's my adventure in Byeonsan Bando. It was a lot of fun, with very few hiccups. It was a good substitute for the island I had wanted to go to, Ulleung-do. I hope to do more backpacking soon.

Jikso Waterfall

After climbing down some muddy trails, stairs, and rock piles, we arrived at Jikso Waterfall, one of the most popular sites in Byeonsan Bando. I believe it's a 30 meter fall. There is a pool at the base with clear, green water. It's quite nice. Had the water not been so cold, I would have gone swimming.











I did manage a wade, though.





The rocks were quite slippery, so I had to kind of crawl out into the water and back.





The pool flows into a little creek, which flows through a wooded area (as if the whole park isn't wooded).

The creek flows into this much smaller fall:





Here's a little more perspective on its size:





After that tiny fall, the creek widens into a bigger fall (you can see the dropoff below):






I did a little climbing about on the rocks:









Here's the third waterfall:






We saw some frogs about. We played with them. They did not mind being touched and petted, but they were not into being captured.

Byeonsan Bando Day Two: The Daytime Trek

After a pretty much sleepless and cold night, with a little rain in the very early morning, there was a moment of hearing just the sounds of the crickets and other bugs, then BIRRRDSOOOONNNGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! About fifty million birds all started chirping at once, including cuckoo birds, which is still funny to think about.

We started hearing people now and then maybe a couple hours after dawn, and we got up at 8:30 to break camp. We had to do that before breakfast, just in case we got caught. Stopping off the trail for breakfast probably would have been more forgiveable than camping overnight. After everything was broken down and picked up, good ol' packaged oatmeal, and a can of pineapple. Then it was off toward Jikso Waterfall, only 2.9 km away. We were planning to take a leisurely hike (although me still working all sorts of muscles I never knew I had) to the waterfall, hang out, then hike toward another entrance booth and camp before we got to the end. That way, there would be less distance to travel to get back into civilization and onto buses home the next day.

The first half of the hike was a lot of staircases like this:





There were also a lot of steep and not-as-steep rocky, rooty, and a little muddy inclines, as well as one three-story metal staircase. With rail. That was nice, but man, all the climbing we'd already done by the time we got to it...

We had to climb across a few rock faces like this one:


I almost fell down on my back like a stupid turtle on one of them, because I forgot to keep leaning forward while I was standing on the incline. But Kent blocked me. That would have sucked. I was right near a cliff, too. Ooooohhhhhh...

At some point the trail started to lose altitude fast, and it was frustrating slash rewarding to know that we had to do all the climbing up and down to get to where we needed to be. I guess that's the nature of the beast.

Around halfway there we reached a crossroads with a way to the waterfall and a way to one of the entrance booths. There were a few groups of people here. By this time we had talked to a few people on the trail, including a Kiwi who stayed at the Naeso-sa Temple, an old Korean dude who used to live in the US who kept us from going up the wrong path (twice), and here at the crossroads, a group of Koreans who didn't really speak much English, but who were clearly asking us if we were camping at the park. These were really the only Koreans who seemed to understand what we were doing. Which reminds me, we met a Korean lady who spoke English at the Buan Bus Terminal who asked us if we were camping, and then told us "it's not that kind of park." Ha ha. Silly Korean noncamper.

And speaking of Korean noncamping, apparently many Koreans have a deep curiosity about the foam our sleeping mats were made of. Kent said that as he walked through the air base with them, a number of Koreans stopped to fondle it. And when we stopped for a few minutes at the crossroads (below-nice view, eh?), a Korean dude went out of his way to come over to me and touch the mat on my pack. Weird.




After that point, the trail became almost totally flat and easy, and when we were almost to the waterfall, we came upon a little waterfall flowing into a little river. Here's me after having climbed off the big rock crossing to get closer to the waterfall:



We had lunch on the rock I'm sitting on. That was probably the coolest place I've ever had lunch.

Here is the creek to the right of the falls:



And to the left:




Here's me sticking my feet into the dropoff in between the two last pictures. The water was pretty cold, like the ocean in Maine:



After lunch it must have been only about a half hour to get to the falls. The trail was totally flat by then, and quite easy. Toward the end of the trail to the waterfall, we started seeing some cool cliff faces:

And had to cross alongside one or two of them:

Sometime mid-afternoon, we reached the falls. To be continued...

Byeonsan Bando National Park, Day One

Friday, June 6 was Memorial Day in Korea, so I got the day off. This was my last three day weekend until mid-August, and I don't get summer vacation until the end of July, so I had to make this one last. I went backpacking in Byeonsan Bando National Park with my friend Kent. The park is in Jeollabuk-do, a province on the west coast, and the park is directly west of Ulsan. I took the bus and it takes a couple transfers to get to where I wanted to be from here.

The first leg was a four and a half hour bus trip from Ulsan to Jeonju. Heather and her husband dropped me off at the Express Bus Terminal, which was nice, since lugging a huge backpack on a city bus to get there would have sucked.

Since I had drank a cup of juice, 3/4 cup of awful oriental medicine, and a bowl of soup for breakfast that morning (it was pretty much the only food I had), I knew it wise to stop in the bathroom before we left. But once wasn't enough, apparently. I felt the urge just ten minutes later, right before we left. There wasn't time. Korean buses don't have lavatories on them, either. They just make stops at rest areas every couple hours. So I had to hold it. Let me tell you, I almost died. Never have I had to piss so bad and had to hold it so long. It was two hours and twenty minutes before we stopped, and I bolted off the bus. I was sweating and almost crying, and I ended up sitting up at the front of the bus, on the floor next to the bus driver, so I wouldn't have to wait for anyone to get out of my way. I'm pretty sure my bladder almost exploded.

After that, the second half of that leg was fine, except for some minor abdominal pain that went away after a while.

Once in Jeonju, I met up with Kent and had a little lunch. Jeonju is supposed to have some of the best food in the country. It was pretty good, but nothing particularly special. I had more soup, haha. Only because there was a picture of this soup I really like on one of the restaurant fronts, and I knew the next bus ride was only an hour and twenty minutes.

That leg was from Jeonju to Buan. Buan is a small town, and the closest major place to the park. From there, we bought a bus ticket to a little place called Gomso, on the southern tip of Byeonsan Bando. We waited for a while, and then Kent decided to ask one of the drivers when our bus would come (by showing him the ticket). The bus driver gave him an answer that either meant the bus was coming in an hour or at 10:10pm. Either way, we didn't want to wait. We still had to hike into the park from Gomso and find a camping spot off the trail.

So we took a taxi. The driver drove us for about a half hour and dropped us off at the bus station, I think. We had joked that Gomso was going to be a store, a restaurant, a school, a post office, and six houses, but it was a decent size town. Old looking. We figured out which direction to walk to get to a park entrance and started. We hit one dead end, where I took this picture:






That's the park in the background. Everyone who saw us in this town stared at us. Not only were we white folk, we were white folk carrying around massive backpacks in the middle of town for some reason.

On the way there, once we were out of the main part of town, we saw this kiln site (with graves), across from a farm with lots of barking dogs. I forgot what the name of it was, but here it is:



We finally got to the park entrance sometime in the evening. Maybe around 5:30 or 6. We walked onto the main trail, but found a smaller trail shortly thereafter and took that one. The point was to find a place far enough off the trail that we could actually pitch a tent and sleep without being bothered. Koreans don't really camp, so we had the element of doing the unexpected on our side. Less chance of getting caught, and even if we were caught, we're just stupid foreigners. I did notice there was a place called Seokpo Camping Park just inside the park, which we passed on the way to the entrance, but we were using that as a backup plan if we couldn't find any place ourselves.

So on the smaller trail, we ended up going off it and just roaming through a bunch of thick flora and not really getting anywhere except into a riverbed that soon started to have a stream in it. So that was a bust. We found another small trail and it led up a mountain that almost killed me. I realized partway up that I haven't climbed anything since I was a kid. I think it's been like fifteen years. So I was almost dead by the time we got up to the top. We would go up the path a bit, and it would turn off, and then we'd get to where we could see around the bend, and yep, more steep climbing. I was already tired. But we ate some GORP and crackers on the way up and took a couple rest stops for a couple minutes and made it to the top. We saw this pile of rocks on the way up:



Is it a grave, or some other special site? We just don't know. But it's a pretty cool pile of rocks.

Upon reaching the peak, we saw a small wooden fence blocking off another smaller trail to the left, and the sign pointed people to the right. So naturally going over the fence was the better idea. Not too far into the prohibited trail was a pretty great camping spot, so we took it and started setting up camp.

Here is me at the peak of that mountain:



Here is our camp, complete with a lead-rope to the "bathroom" for night trips, just in case:



This is a little clearing where we did our cooking and eating, next to the clearing with the tent (with bear-bag below):



This is a view from our campsite:



Not too shabby. The reason this trail was fenced off of course was that it was right next to a massive dropoff. The bear bag in the picture above was hanging right over a big crevasse, which was scary to go near, so Kent had to put up and take down the bear bag himself. Screw that.

But don't worry, we tented far enough for there to be no danger of falling off, and the rope was there to lead us in the dark (we didn't even end up using it, though).

It was freezing Friday night. I was so cold I didn't even really sleep. It also rained a little bit, but not enough to cause a problem. Our bags were covered in a poncho, and the bottoms weren't even wet the next morning. Except for the not sleeping and being cold part, it was a pretty good camping experience, my first time camping without a campground.