Day 63 - Jirisan

Woke up and had a few things to get together for our weekend trip, had to do some washing and sort out some head torches. Went to meet Heeji for dinner where we meeting the coach to Jirisan, which is a national Park. We had a lovely meal in a place called sadang, although we had to wait over an hour to be seated as was a popular place. It was worth the wait though. Then we got on the Coach at 10.20 and drove through the night. I did not sleep a wink. The bus driver was so bad, it was like he'd never driven a bus before, either that or he was intentiaonally trying to shake everyone on the bus awake. At one point he got stuck trying to get round a steep mountain corner. He stalled it and lost power steering, we didnt know if we going to go backwards over the edge of a cliff or something. We got to the first drop off point, there was the option of doing a 30 km walk, leaving at 3.30 am or staying on the bus and doing a shorter walk at around 15km. I wanted to do longer walk, but Heeji was abit too scared, bless her as she had never walked that far. I said with this driver its far more rational to be more scared staying on the bus. She said I could go on the long walk on my own, but really I just wanted to spend the day with her. So we stayed on the bus with the old people, children and fat people, for another 2 hours or so. We started walking aourn 6 am I think. I was a bit dissapointed, and a bit angry with the bad driver keeping me all night. So was feeling pretty exhausted when we set off. We walked though a forest for some time, it was almost like a rain forest, but was nice in the sunrise. Unfortunately the cloud cover was quite heavy so we didnt see the actual sunrise. Evetually we had got pretty high, and a beautiful vista opened up. Super Day all in all!

 We contiued up the path a lot of which was made into steps. It was quite tough going. But it was just nice to be on a mountain with Heeji. There was only 5 of us in the group. Eric the organiser, who is very nice. A funny guy from Idia called Mohammad and a larger american lady whom Heeji had met before, who was very nice but did not cope well with the climb. That was funny we had taken some noodles for lunch and Heeji asked me to put them in my bag. I asked her just out of interest if I have the water, the food, and the water proofs in my bag, wheat exactly do you have in your bag. She wouldnt tell me. I said do you have anything useful for climbing the mountain. She said no. She had over night things, make up and stuff for her book club tommorow!! Hahaha we couldnt stop laughing for ages, I know I notoriously bad a packing for going up mountains, but she seems to have got the award, especially as we could leave things on the bus!! Bless her!! Too cute! The last haul up to the summit was pretty steep, and there were lots of people. When we got there I 've never seen so many people all trying to stand on the top. There was a queue to have your photo taken by the head stone! We then turned along the ridge and walked a long for another hour or so before finding a shelter where we stopped for lunch, I found an enormous moth, I was not sure if it was dead or not, sometimes they just appear dead, but need some more energy from the sun. So I took it off the path and found a little sunny shelter should it come round again, beautiful creature though. On the way back down the mountain, we followed the mountain stream. It had lovely pools and waterfalls and we stopped and put our feet in. Wow the last 2 km was really heavy going, just walking over rocks, and tough on our knees. When we arrived we still had to wait a long time for Alenka ( the american woman) and the other group. So we had some food and Makgoli and beer and the food was soooo good. The advanced group turned up, and they were all in a foul mood and said the walk was a nightmare but they didn't wanna talk about it. I was a bit glad I hadn't gone with them as our team had nicer people, and the walk was plenty challenge enough. As soon as they arrived they had a beer but they didnt have time to finish, as Eric was keen to get going. We got back on the coach for another 2 hours. I was glad I wasnt them to finish a walk and have to get straight on the coach without time to have something to eat and drink. We stopped at services and had a hotdog. Then we went back to my house and had baths, and watched some funny shows.

Sweet Heeji, but check out the guy on the right!!

Summit