Day 3: Bukhansan National Park

We decided that today we wanted to do some hiking. It's our last day in Seoul that we don't have training, and we felt the need to take advantage of it. There are quite a few mountains in and around Seoul, and many of them are in Bukhansan National Park, which is actually partially within the city limits of Seoul. It took almost 2 hours by subway/walking to get to the park, but it was worth it.

We didn't really know exactly where we were going, so we just started hiking uphill. A mile or so in, there was a beautiful temple, called Hoeryongsa. The woodwork and painting were amazing.

We kept hiking up and eventually found a nice rocky area with good views to stop and have a snack. We sat down and started eating, and suddenly a cat appeared! We had no idea where it came from, but it was clearly used to begging from hikers. It sat there looking at us, patiently waiting for us to give it some food. Based on its size, it seemed to have been doing quite well for itself. Not surprising, considering Bukhansan gets about 10 million visitors per year (there was a sign proclaiming that it is in the Guinness Book of World Records for the most yearly visitors per area of any national park in the world).

Our snack time buddy - all white with bright blue eyes and a black tail.

After our cat-infested break, it was only another kilometer or so to the top of Sapaesan, one of the park's mountains. The views from there were amazing. We could see a lot of other peaks in the park, but we could also see a lot of Seoul, which was kind of cool. Here are some pictures from the top:

On the way back down we made some observations about Korean hikers. First, and most obvious, almost all of them were completely decked out in hiking equipment. Trekking poles, fancy backpacks, nice hiking boots, and, above all, multicolored hiking pants. There were so many people who had the same style hiking pants, with one color at the bottom and top of the pants with a different color in the knee/butt area. If I were to start a Korean business, I would probably manufacture multicolored hiking pants, because there seems to be a huge market for them. Second, the most common demographic seemed to be 50-somethings. In America most people you see hiking tend to be younger, but today most people we saw were at least in their 40s, and many were older. And it was a Sunday, so it's not like young people were in school.

We thought about doing another mountain, since it was only about 11 when we got done with Sapaesan, but we haven't fully recovered from our 30-hour travel day yet so we decided not to overdo it and go back to the hotel and relax a bit in preparation for the start of training tomorrow. I guess it's time to stop being tourists and start working!