"Dude, this guy just on sighted that five eight. Clean"

One of the best things about couchsurfing is that you get exposed to your host's hobbies. My host in Seoul, Danielle, is a big time rock climber.

So on Friday after she got out of work, Danielle and I took a train 4 hours south to Youngsa popo (I am almost definitely spelling this wrong), a waterfall in Korea with lots of good climbing around it. Instead of paying the $18 for the train ticket, we just sat on the floor of the cafe car, which is apparently a popular thing for frugal Koreans to do.

Most of these men were at least a little drunk when this picture was taken.
So was the photographer (that's me!). 

When we got to the station at around midnight, we still had an hour hike to get to our campsite. Hauling a pack with a tent, cooking equipment, ropes, and carabeners for an hour through the dark really makes you appreciate a place more. 

Sometime in the night her climbing buddies had arrived, but we woke up first. Danielle was anxious to get climbing, but didn't trust me to belay her, so I got the first climb of the day. This climb was a "lead" instead of a "top-rope" climb.

If you know climbing lingo
   skip the next paragraph
else
   keep reading
end

Top rope climbing is the one you do when you go to a rock gym and get in your harness and climb using the rope that is already there. This is 100% safe, because there is never more than a foot or two of slack in the rope, so falls are harmless. With lead climbing, the only thing that is already there are little bolts drilled into the rock face and it is your job to clip your rope into these bolts. The bolts are vertically separated by about 10 feet though, so you get quite a bit of slack in the rope when you are above one bolt but haven't et clipped into the next.

Anyways, this makes lead climbing way more intense and falling much more frightening. Luckily, I successfully completed my first climb without falling (it was a really easy climb though. A 5.8 difficulty level which is basically the bunny slope of rock climbing).



Coming down from first climb.

Her friends were pretty hardcore. They were climbing things that looked like vertical walls with only an occasional crack or bump to grip.

Badass.

More people showed up. We climbed, we ate Indian food, we drank, we had a jam session around the fire. We slept. Next day, more of the same. Climbers (well these climbers at least) are very easy to get along with.

Camping breakfast is the best breakfast.

We were riding dirty for the train ride back, but nobody asked for tickets again, so that was nice. A Korean woman and her 7 year old daughter (that's Korean years btw, so 6 year old by US standards. In Korea you start at 1) talked to me for an hour and wanted to see every picture in my camera.

Thanks for the candy Korean girl!

This was a great weekend. I am finding that I really don't care much about exploring big cities. I can't really appreciate the uniqueness of a city unless I've lived there for months, and since I don't really want to do that I think for the rest of my trip I will try to just duck into cities for a day or two and then head to the smaller towns as much as possible.

Except, of course, for Hong Kong.  Tomorrow I will fly to Hong Kong, and when I do I will be legally stranded on the island. Hopefully I will be able to quickly and easily get my visa for mainland China and then move on. But I am very excited to see Calvin and Nick.