4th of July rafting and spelunking

Have you ever gone into the bathroom on a humid day just after someone got out of a long, hot shower? Or imagine the sticky wet feeling of going into a sauna fully clothed. . . The feel of putting on clothes fresh from the dryer, when they're warm but not yet dry. That's what it's like outside right now here in Anseong Korea, at 9:26 pm. I never thought it could be dark and hot and windy and foggy all at the same time. I've been told it's a dry 'wet season' here this year but it's plenty humid.

So the rainy season is supposed to be upon us and my raincoat is hanging at the ready in my closet... in San Jose. Fortunately shopping for clothes in this town is easy, the local Lotte Mart has a nice selection of jackets and there are quite a few familiar brand-name outlets in town. Unfortunately my stature doesn't resemble the Korean norm, as was displayed most unfavorably by the look of horror on the face of the nice lady at the Lotte Mart as I tried on a size XL raincoat. The sleeves ended just below my elbows and zipping it up wasn't going to happen - even spandex won't stretch that far. So I peeled off the jacket being careful not to tear anything and wriggled into a size XXL. Much better, I could actually zip this one up... if I held my breath. I didn't really check the sleeve length, I was afraid the shoulder seam might tear if I reached forward. The look of exasperation on the clerk was enough to convince me to look elsewhere. Down the street are a few outlet stores that sell outdoor gear, so I choose to try on a size XXXL jacket at the Black Yak store but it was still too tight across the shoulders and the prices were scary expensive. So where does an American buy clothes around here? Outside the Osan American Air Force base! There I found a USA sized XL jacket, quite reasonably priced and hand-made by the seamstress in the store. I'm warming up to the 'think globally, buy locally' concept!

Shoes. Now that's another story. I was invited to go river rafting over the 4th of July weekend so a pair of water shoes were also on my shopping list. Fortunately, the sneekers I wore from home have my european size printed inside, but unfortunately finding size 295 water shoes is difficult. One shopkeeper looked at my feet, shook her head and told me 'no big sizes.' After wandering around the shopping district for a couple of hours I settled on a pair of Adidas size 305 - they're a bit narrow but they stretched to fit okay. Ironically, I returned to first store I looked to buy them.

Saturday July 5th, 5:30AM. The insistent bee-bee-bee-beep bee-bee-bee-beep of the alarm clock drifts through my head, dredging out sleep like a vacuum cleaner sucking up a trunkfull of goose down. I think I have finally figured out that alarm clocks don't awaken their sleeping owners, they're merely empty vessels that fill themselves up with sleep when they sound off in the morning. Snooze buttons are merely valves that open to return a tiny bit of sleep back to you, to be sucked away again a precious few minutes later.

Roger is picking me up around 7:00AM and I still have to stuff my clothes into my day pack. The Plan, as I understand it, is to drive East, camp on Saturday night, go rafting on Sunday and return home. I've been told not to worry about food, and Roger has a spare tent and sleeping bag. Just in case I pack a few apples, hard boiled eggs and instant coffee. It's a privilege to be a passenger in Rogers SUV for the weekend, riding East along highway 38 let me enjoy the scenery and it reminds me of the Sierra foothills back home - low hills covered with thick brush and lightly forested. The highways we traveled are only a decade old and in great shape, with more tunnels than I'm used to on U.S. highways.

We arrived around 11 am and met up with the rest of the group at the camp site, unpacked and set up the tents on the sandy banks of the Dong Gang river. The shade of the bridge over the river was welcome relief from the mid-day sun, and surprisingly the mosquitoes didn't find my blood to their liking. The afternoon was lazy, we did go in to town to get lunch and supplies but mostly just splashed around in the river and enjoyed the day. For dinner there was fresh corn on the cob and chicken bought from a local farmer. The corn was different from American corn, tougher and not as sweet but good all the same. The chicken was boiled in a huge pot set in the top of a 55 gallon drum with a fire below, then rice added for a combined dish best described as chicken porridge. I also enjoyed the freshly picked, boiled white potatoes.

Sunday morning my hard boiled eggs and instant coffee were breakfast, the kimchee raman cooked up by the group didn't appeal to me for breakfast. We packed up and drove up the river to where the river rafting outfitters set up shop, packed ourselves into their vans for the drive up the river where we would mount the rafts. The road to the drop off point is mostly under construction so it wasn't the smoothest road through the mountains. Our group filled up two vans of mostly Koreans with four Americans mixed in for ballast. I found size does have it's privileges in the raft, the guide assigned me to the front right of the raft and Ben on the left. It must have been a good choice since the guide kept shouting instructions in Korean with mounting enthusiasm throughout the trip -- he would shout, and Ben and I would paddle like crazy. I don't know why the others on the boat kept looking at us like we were deaf -- neither of us hid the fact that we don't understand Korean... After the guide switched to shouting, "one two three four" for the paddling cadence he seemed to calm down a lot.

Roger had his little waterproof digital helmet camera along for the trip and here's one of the video clips he took of us navigating one of the few whitewater portions:



It was fun floating the river, with the water levels low this year the whitewater was really calm though.


After rafting, we visited the Gossi cave, it goes about 700m into the mountain and is pretty amazing. At the cave entrance visitors were asked to take a hardhat for safety, a good idea since mine got used a number of times once inside. Along the entire path inside the cave, catwalks and handrails have been installed to keep people, and the cave, safe from each other. I can't believe they let visitors actually touch some of the formations inside the cave, they look incredibly fragile and have taken millions of years to form.













It took me a couple of weeks to get around to posting this time, I'll try to be more speedy and less wordy in my next post.

Since I began this post three weekends ago, I visited the Bulguksa temple on July 12th, and also went to lunch in Fukuoka, Japan on July 19th. It has also started raining today July 20th so I may have a lot more time to update my blog.

Thanks for reading,

Jerry.