Below is a picture as the sun was rising on Thursday morning, the morning of Chuseok. All through the previous night, the wind blew constantly, making the tent flap around, making sleep impossible. Many of us were up at around 3 or 4am, since it was quieter outside and the temperature was surprisingly mild.
We had a lazy morning before hitting up the ATV/ scooter rental shops to rent some transport to see the island. Took us a few tries to find a place that would rent to us without international licenses, but finally we came across a place that set us up with a couple ATVs and scooters.
We used our two hours to see a lot of what must've been the southern part of the island. We stopped off at a small tourist town and went down countless steps onto a black sand beach. There were a lot of people around, so we just followed the crowd of people heading into a cave on the beach called called Dongangyoeng 동안경굴 cave. The footing was rocky and hard to navigate, but we made our way up a small pile of rocks, through the cave wall, and into the huge black cavern.
Next we rode across a bridge and parked near a pier with a lighthouse. Brad's up there in the picture. Pretty sure climbing the lighthouse is not allowed. Once he came down the ladder, though, all of the other Korean tourists swarmed around the base and tried their hand at climbing up...
We returned our ATVs and scooters and spent the rest of the day relaxing on the beach and swimming. There were TONS of tourists around for Chuseok, and it was a little overwhelming. We would go into the water to swim and when we came out onto the beach there would be a load of tourists exiting a bus and standing there taking pictures of the beach (and therefore, us).
That night we played cards and were joined around the our fire by Sean, a Canadian man who teaches English near Pusan. He was camping around with his dog, Alley, for the Chuseok holiday. Some other people wandered over to our fire as well. We met a Korean couple and their two daughters, who instantly bonded with Jen after she gave them OJ and dried pineapple. Another visitor included a pregnant woman and her slightly intoxicated husband, who were both really nice.
That night we shared our campsite with at least three sets of other campers, but despite the noise, the smells from their cookstoves, and the full moon illuminating the landscape, the wind had died down, and weighed down by exhaustion I fell onto my sleeping bag and had a much appreciated full night's rest.
