Day 92: Sorakhsan

After a very restful sleep in our love motel room, the four of us got showered up and dressed for our big day of hiking. We went and had some lunch in town and then drove on over to nearby Sorakhsan National Park. Sorakhsan to Korea is what Banff is to Canada - it is the prime jewel in Korea's crown of national parks - the most beautiful, the most famous, and the most crowded! Sorakhsan is known for its INSANE CROWDS but luckily the bulk of the traffic is concentrated in and around the East Gate of the park near Sokcho, and we were entering from the northwest side at a gate that receives very little traffic.

We found our trail entrance and made our way into the spectacular Sibiseonnyeotang Gorge. The Gorge (as it will now be known as, cause I don't want to have to write its name out more than once) is a small but beautiful canyon that slices its way deep into the park. A small river/large stream runs through the gorge and forms many beautiful waterfalls, rapids, and calm pools of crystal clear water. We spent over five and a half hours hiking the trail in and out of the gorge and it was incredibly beautiful. So quiet, so serene, so scenic, and so not like other hiking trails in Korea! In Korea's national parks on weekends it's not uncommon for it to be SO BUSY that people actually have to queue up just to get *onto* a trail - most trails in Korea are in fact just very long lines of people moving up the mountain like ants. It's even not uncommon for most national parks to have to PAVE their hiking trails because of the incredible volume of people that track through every weekend! CRAZY! This hike however, was completely unlike that. During our whole day in the gorge we came across maybe 4 or 5 other groups of people. Otherwise, it felt like we had the park to ourselves. What was funny was with the fresh air, lush green forest, and cool grey weather, I totally felt like I could've been hiking in a park back in British Columbia! I had to keep reminding myself that I was in Korea, not back home in Canada!

It was much more of an intense hike than we thought it would be - certainly no leisurely walk through the woods! The terrain was quite steep in portions, and in some sections you had to use a rope to climb up or down, or just hold onto so you don't plunge into the river below! (Barb you wouldn't have liked this hike - too many heights for you babe!) It was a great workout for us and the MASSIVE WATERFALL at the end of the trail (well, as far as we had planned to venture in that day) was well worth the long hike. We sat across from the waterfall and relaxed and ate cookies, enjoying the spectacular site of the rushing water carving out a massive slice through the hard granite. So amazing!!! It was then time to make our way back to the car. A great hike, albeit quite challenging, but very beautiful and well worth it in the end!

By the time we got back to the car we were SO TIRED but feeling proud of our big hiking accomplishment. We got back on the highway and headed for the coast where we were planning to spend the night. The drive to the East Coast of Korea was a beautiful one, with the highway winding up and over several large mountains, forcing us to drive very slowly through some hair-pin turns on the mountain switchbacks! We arrived in the port city of Sokcho around 7:30pm and were happy to find a hotel room. We were even more happy when we found out that just around the corner was a large water park with A HOT TUB THAT WE COULD SOAK IN! The only catch was that the park closed at 8:30pm and didn't allow anyone in after 8pm. The four of us RACED into the hotel room, madly threw on our bathing suits, and sped on over to Waterpia.

We arrived at exactly 8:01pm and were turned away by the bitchy cunt who was giving out tickets at the door. "I've done all my counting for the night and I don't want to do anymore" was her response to us (in Korean, luckily we had Eric to translate.) We all wanted to bitch slap her so she directed us to the Manager, who was nice enough to let all of us in afterall! Again, we madly raced through the locker rooms and dove on in to that hot tub. Dear God did it ever feel good!!! We all had one giant communal sigh of relief and relaxation when we sat in that tub, and none of us moved an inch from that luscious hot water. Yeah there was waterslides and wave pools and tube runs that we could've played in, but all we wanted was to soak our tired muscles in that hot tub. And it was so worth it - it was like heaven in a hot pot!!! :-)

After our soak we went out for dinner to Pizza Hut and were all absolutely famished so we ate a disgusting amount of food. Even though we ate until we wanted to puke we still had room for ice cream later on, so we grabbed some dessert and headed back to the hotel room. We rented two movies - 'To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar' and 'Ocean's Eleven' but only made it through 'To Wong Foo'! We were completely exhausted so we hit the sack and had a wonderful, long, deep sleep. Ahhhhh! :-)