The hike – Yudalsan, take two

Our afternoon began with a quick stop at the “woman tree”. I had never seen it before, but it was apparently a famous thing in Mokpo (probably world famous, if you asked anyone). Sarah took me over to show me, and I was like “Okay, I think I see it…” and she said “No, it’s the one below that.”
Then I said “Oh Lord!”, and some Korean ladies behind us started killing themselves laughing. Woman tree is right.
The hike at Yudalsan with Rodrigo and Sarah (after the stop at the woman tree) started off the same as last time. It was very strenuous to start, as we were just scaling stairs. It was very busy, and I was really feeling my inactivity over the last few months catching up to me. I was not looking forward to a few more hours of this.
There’s one thing that you have to understand about hiking in Korea. When Koreans prepare a mountain trail, they do it by installing stairs. You are climbing up stairs. That is hard, and boring.
Luckily, Rodrigo and Sarah were locals, so they knew of a few trails with no stairs (but roped to help with the steep parts). These trails had much fewer people, more interesting scenery, and it was easier! Oddly enough, the stairs not only made it more dangerous (in my opinion) and less interesting, they also made climbing the mountain harder!
We stopped for lunch about halfway up, at this little stone picnic bench with a great view. They had prepared some delicious baguette chicken sandwiches (chicken prepared in the rice cooker, tried it today, divine) that went well with the blueberry “Wild Vines” cooler I had brought (drinking in public is legal here [and frighteningly common]) and we had fresh banana bread for dessert (made in our new oven).
We took a few long cat breaks on the way up, and it was great. Then we got to the top. I didn’t even think we were so close! The hike had seemed so easy (no stairs, lots of distracting nature around) that I hadn’t even realized how far we had gone.
We had a great view from the top. Mostly, the view was of this girl, dressed like she was going to the movies (with a boy clearly dressed for a day at a mountain). She was jumping up and down like crazy, because the coast guard helicopter was circling the mountaintop. I’m pretty sure that the first time around was a “let’s buzz the mountain” moment, and the three times after that were “Check out that girl!”
We really took our time on the way down. Another great change from my usual mountain experiences was that because we hadn’t taken stairs the whole way up, there was no wobbliness of our knees. It was a very easy trek down.
Then we walked home.