Day 478: Our Beach

Ahhh yes, the weekend that we've been waiting for for so long...the first long weekend we've had here in Korea since February! With the beautiful weather we've been having lately, we couldn't have picked a nicer weekend to take a 3-day camping trip out to Dokchokdo. Dokchokdo is our favourite island, and one that we camped at twice last summer (remember "Survivor?")

We headed out early on Saturday morning to catch the 9:30am ferry, and lemme tell ya it was quite the Amazing Race to get on that boat. An underestimation in the time it would take to drive from Ilsan to Incheon nearly resulted in Michael, Katie, and I missing the ferry! Luckily we got on the boat at the last minute, and soon we were cruising our way out to sea.

Besides being a bit like The Amazing Race, our day was also a bit like the movie The Beach. Our Beach on the island is an undiscovered little gem that us friends happily keep from the rest of the world. It's a sheltered strip of pure clean sand next to blue-green waters and surrounded by a forested hill, banked at either end by rocky bookends that have kept this beach safe and protected from the bulk of the island's tourist traffic. Most beaches in Korea are crowded and noisy with hundreds of families crawling all over them. But not Our Beach. It honestly is the only nice natural spot I've ever seen in Korea that's not constantly covered in other people. And for that reason we harbour our little treasure, telling its location only to our closest of friends, for fear that if its location were known it would soon be over-run with hordes of tourists (and most likely foreigners!) I think you truly have to spend quite a bit of time in Korea to get a true understanding of how rare a secluded beach is. Like Leonardo DiCaprio in 'The Beach', we guard this beach with our silence.

And we had an especially dire need to keep our mouths shut this weekend. On the boat with us were what seemed like hundreds of other foreigners all eagerly seeking an escape from the city for the long weekend and headed to the same island as us. It was quite shocking to see so many of them actually - it was as if all of Itaewon had deciced to abandon the city for the weekend! Part of our gang was Darryl and his girlfriend, who were hanging out with Darryl's ENTIRE SOCCER TEAM AND ALL OF THEIR GIRLFRIENDS! Dear Lord! The last thing we need is for our little piece of paradise to be discovered by and trampled with thirty loud drunken abrasive soccer players! Darryl knows how important secrecy is for Our Beach, and so he agreed to sacrifice himself and stay away from Our Beach while hanging with his soccer buddies. And when our boat docked and they all barged off the ferry, we happily let each and every foreigner get onto the shuttle buses and disappear off up the hill before we left the terminal.

This is OUR BEACH, and yes we're selfish and don't wanna share it with anyone! So there! ;-)

We happily discovered our beach to be completely empty upon our arrival and we immediately set up camp. It was actually incredibly foggy, despite the fact that it was a bright sunny day. A few hours later, as if being pulled out like a blanket off the floor by the hands of an unseen giant, the fog suddenly *rolled* out off the beach and back across the bay, pouring up and over the offshore islands to disappear beyond. What a strange sight!

We spent the afternoon relaxing in the sand, and then later when Pauline and Tim joined us we went into the nearby town for some dinner. After supper we headed back to Our Beach to make a bonfire and relax together. We called it an early night and went to sleep in our tents.