Suraksan

We work with a girl named Sunny Cho, who is in a hiking group. On the weekends, this group goes all over the country to hike different mountains. They're basically nuts. After work on Friday night (around midnight), they'll get on a bus to drive 5 hours to a mountain. When they get there, they'll hike it, descend,  find a place to eat (& drink lots and lots of rice wine), and then hop back on the bus to drive back home.

Sunny had tried to get us to go hiking with her for several weeks, so when she said that they were going to Surak, we figured that was the time to go. Suraksan is northeast of Seoul. It's actually really close to North Korea. They said that on a clear day, you can see North Korea from the top. But it wasn't clear enough when we went.

      

This was easily the most dangerous hike either of us have ever done. They said to bring gloves for the ropes. We kind of laughed and bought $7 gloves to make them happy. Turns out, we needed them. Turns out, the ropes were metal. And if you don't use the ropes, we think you just fall off the mountain.

You almost get a really good shot of what our butts look like when we hike, but they're being blocked by another guys butt. So that's what his butt looks like when he hikes. Sorry! And the picture below is of the peak that we were headed toward.

You can't see, but just past this picture, the mountain completely drops off.

Why do we look so happy?

Sean's bloody gloves.

He was very proud of these gloves. Everyone in the hiking group had expensive professional hiking gloves, but he bought his at a convenience store for less than a dollar. They are gardening gloves (also used in batting cages here), but Sean decided they would do. Only problem is that the palms are covered in red rubber, for traction. We asked him who's blood was on them, but he wouldn't tell us. He said he doesn't like telling people who he kills, or where he buries them. He said that if we asked too many questions, we'd have to be next. He's seriously the nicest guy we've met over here. He's extremely kind and generous, making the whole "bloody gloves" thing hilarious. We still give him a hard time about it at work, and he still hasn't killed us. Good, clean fun.

Oh, what!?! Did you say we're dangerously close to communist North Korea?... and they have guns?

Well so do we!

When we got to the bottom, they found a nice little restaurant to eat at. It was a typical after-hiking restaurant/watering hole. So we sat on the floor around the table with our new friends and they ordered us a traditional meal. The main dish was a hot stew. They were nice and ordered us a pot with less firey hotness. It was slightly less red than the other pots around the table, so we tried it, and it felt like actual flames of a fire burning our throats as it went down. At least we didn't get the really hot stuff.

These are the crazy hikers we spent the day with. That's Sunny, next to Ricky.

They were insane, over-prepared, and fun

...but they made us drink rice wine!