Korean adventure Day 11 (83km, 480m)

No big hills so it was a relatively easy day! It started with out ride to our breakfast restaurant. We cycled around a beautiful lake with the sun shining down on us. The lake was surrounded by all types of art installations so our eyes were darting around the whole time. Luckily the path was excellent and there weren’t a lot of other people on our path.
Breakfast was an interesting Tofu Hot Pot with crab and mushrooms. Let’s just say it is a good thing I don’t eat breakfast. It was certainly not the traditional western breakfast, and it didn’t even come with coffee. I would say that this was probably the most difficult meal for the group. They enjoyed it, but it was weird to have it at 8:00am.

We mostly stayed right along the coastline today passing by fishing villages, beach towns, surfing schools, farmland, rice paddies, industrial areas and houses. It was incredibly diverse and yet all the same. Once you’ve ridden through one coastal town, you’ve seen most of them. As the ride was quite easy, it did give us a chance to actually see more things instead of huffing and puffing up and down enormous hills.
We stopped by some beaches, fish markets and temples along the way, buying some local snacks, talking with the shop keepers and getting a better feel of life on the coast.

Lunch was at a 7-11 type convenience store – which we have now become accustomed to –  but we have finally figured out that we can heat up food in the store so our choices have tripled. As a by product, they have also gotten more nutritionally responsible. It is an easy and fast option for us and everybody can find something they want to eat.

We passed the 38th Parallel, where the arbitrary border was placed between North and South Korea by the US and the USSR in 1945. It was amended in ‘53. We are now getting closer to the DMZ. Evidence of this was the first time we passed through a Barricade Tunnel. That was quite the adventure. They are built all over the northern part of South Korea and are there just in case the North decides to invade. The blocks of concrete are meters thick and if there is any sign of a breach, they will get blown up, making the road impassable thus stopping, or at least significantly delaying an invasion.

Our pension (hotel) is aptly named the Persimmon Tree Pension with its enormous tree right in the courtyard. We have to pick some of the fresh fruit off this tree!!

Another traditional meal to try – Pork Cutlets – and wine to wrap up our evening. We are truly on a culinary adventure as well as a cycling trip.
What a day!