Big weekend, part 1

I had an absolutely massive weekend about 3 weeks ago and I've been putting off making a post about it, mainly because I feel compelled to write some elephantine blog entry to compliment its scale and complexity. Also, keeping it entertaining is a must, especially if it's a long entry. Maybe I'll Davinci Code the whole thing into small digestible morsels so no one gets overwhelmed by any hulking paragraphs. Yeah, let's do that.

So, on a whim, I decided to join my coworkers on a trip to Jindo Island to see the Miracle Sea Road, a phenomenon in which, for a very fleeting period of time in the entire year, the tide gets so low, that a land bridge forms between Jindo and an adjacent isle.

The story, if you must know.

The island becomes a mottle of townies and tourists, there for either the once in a lifetime experience, or the all-you-can-gather clam clamor (wow, I'm copywriting that).

It's also very very far outside of Seoul, way down here to be exact, so it took a whopping 7 hours to get there by taxi/train/bus/bus/bus again, with each conveyance getting progressively more ramshackle as we went on. Eventually we were scooting through rice fields with old Korean marms. We left Seoul at 5:20 am and arrived sometime just after noon.

It also bears mentioning that the weather was so deathly cold, I spent the first several hours in a huddled, glowering mass. The sky was filled with ugly, ominous clouds and the wind made the unbearably low temperature feel even lower. Special event tents were whipping about everywhere and the impromptu bouncy castle was a guaranteed death sentence.

See? Gorgeous.

The seas were set to part at around 5 that day, so we had more than a few hours to kill. The various demonstration tents and kiosks provided very sparse entertainment in the form of grinding seaweed and hitting a couple of drums here and there. The real entertainment came from hanging out at the restaurant tents. People eating live squid, circles of old women singing and clapping, drunk Korean country folk jostling one another...

Making seaweed.

Then, magically at around 5, the skies cleared up and the sun came out. All those who came out for the hallowed sea parting were no doubt humbled by this divine fortune. The weather warmed up, and like magic, the once roaring water was partitioned by a long strip of seabed. I decided to scale a cliffside to snap a couple of opportune shots.


Speaking of being opportune, they were hawking theigh-high boots close to the land bridge for 5000 won and I managed to score some in my size for the trip. The water got above the knee at some points and my friends and coworkers, who up until that point were rubbing in the fact that they brought their own boots, definitely wished they had bought a pair of wellys.

If ya got wellys, throw your hands up!

Israelites

Group shot!

The bridge itself was awesome. A long stretch of people, all united by the thrill of the trek. All of the ordeals I had endured up until that point seemed worth it. I made it about halfway until the men in boats told me to go back because the sea was closing up. Incidentally, so were the clouds.

Initially we had all planned on camping out on the beach, but since the weather decided to be colder than a witch's tit, we agreed to hightail it back to the closest urban area and score a hotel room. I didn't bring any sleeping gear either (WHOOPS!) so I was thrilled with this decision.

Getting to the closest urban area was easier said than done, considering we had to take two very infrequent, rural buses to get there. Half of us grabbed a taxi to the Jindo terminal and then caught the last bus to Mokpo. The other half couldn't fit into the initial taxi, missed the bus and had to take a 70,000 won cab ride all the way back to Mokpo. When we got back, we crammed all 6 of us into a hotel room and capped the night off with some Cass Red.

That was saturday.

Sunday was a whole different bag of nuts, so maybe I'll get to that another time. Give this entry some closure. Thanks for reading!