I decided last week that I would go to Suraksan (수락산) again this weekend. I couldn’t have chosen a hotter time to go. It was up to 32 degrees and humid today. I’m pretty sure I lost a lot of water weight today.
I was up at 5am for no apparent reason again, so I decided to laze around a bit and get out there early. One thing lead to another and I ended up at the foot of Suraksan around 9:30am.
This isn’t my first time at Suraksan. I have been there once before, but this time I decided to take a different route. I was walking through thick forest for about 2.5 hours. I never realized how the trees keep the humidity in, and the wind out. I was sweating buckets.
Once I got to the top, I was greeted with this:
Just a little humid.
Anyway, I had a great time. It’s a pretty challenging mountain at certain parts. I think I need to invest in a decent pair of hiking boots. My old Adidas just aren’t doing the job on the mountains. I saw this one old man climbing rock faces like a spider. It was insane. I made a video of it which I will upload in a bit. I attempted to do what he did while he was around me, but I’m simply not that brave. I was hugging that rock like it was my mother.
This rock, actually:
Photos don’t really show its true size. There’s nothing else in the frame to compare it to. Let’s do the measurement in school bus units. The rock was about 3 school buses tall, and about 4 wide. It was absolutely massive.
After I got to the peak, I relaxed there for a bit, then headed down. I made a wrong turn, and ended up walking an extra 45 minutes or so to get to the subway station. I swear I walked at least 10km today.
I only applied a little bit of sunscreen, and so I have a nasty burn on my shoulders and face. To top this off, while I was walking home, an old lady stopped, smiled, yelled something in Korean, and slapped my sunburn. I think I got her message.
Oh, Korea…
