Beach Trip

With a new hard drive to set up and no internet in the new apartment, it's been tough to blog lately. I have a back-log of pictures that I've been meaning to post though, so I think we'll do pictures for the next few days. That and probably some sort of comment on the election, beyond this: Vote!

A couple weeks ago a bunch of us foreigners from Samcheok went to Chuam Beach, between Samcheok and Donghae. We found the beach at koreaontherocks.com - it is supposed to have some nice bouldering. It was a quick 8,000 won taxi ride from the Samcheok Bus Terminal, and well worth the trip. Bouldering without shoes or chalk turned out to be less appealing than we had hoped, but it is an excellent beach, with no crouds, some nice restaurants and beautiful rock formations.

It is apparently cuttlefish drying season. The ladies that were hanging these didn't want me to photograph them, but I snuck this shot in before I asked.

They kind of look like aliens, don't they? The fish, I mean!

We did get some bouldering in. This is Mark and Chad on the rocks.

And Mark again, having climbed a bit.

This is where we had lunch - excellent dwaenjang jjigae (spicy fermented soybean paste stew). I thought it funny that the wall had a hand-painted fan and roll of toilet paper next to each other, so I asked Ben to pose with them, not thinking that he would try to dominate the funny of the picture.

Kate on Chad's long iron rod.

Melanie took special interest in the shells of the beach, an interest that ended up getting her in quite deep.

And Melanie with her well-earned, picture-perfect sand dollar. And no spare clothes.

Maybe next summer we'll come back for some cliff-jumping.