Korean Adventure Day 12 (56km, 448m)

Today’s beautifully sunny morning begins with farmer Paul harvesting some persimmons for us. Just a breakfast appetizer he claims. Then we are off to a bakery for some doughy goodness and a caffeine drip.

Today was a big day for me…I decided to wear my bike shoes and be clipped in for the ride, I had Paul lower my seat 1/4 inch and I travelled with my paniers. All of this meant readjusting to the bike yet again, working my knee into a different bend and making sure I can unclip successfully and in a timely fashion every time. My heart was pounding!!

Ready to roll at 9 bells for our relatively easy day. We can tell we are getting closer to the border as we pass by the Barricade Tunnels and Bridges. But we also pass by plenty of rice paddies at different stages of growth. And, the icing on the cake (gum?? LOL), we pass by a small farm and Paul negotiates us some enormous apples. Huge score!

We keep going because our plan is to dump our paniers at our hotel in Goseong and then keep biking to the DMZ.

But…as we are riding through a village, we are surrounded by tents, kiosks and people. There is a Fish Festival happening and it looks so fun that we have to stop here for lunch. There are games to play, street foods to try and tons of locals out for a fun time.

We must have stood out—white people wearing funny clothes—because the local journalist wanted to interview us and take our picture.

Moving on we are again surrounded by mountains and trees to our left and ocean to the right. We also pass by some gorgeous lakes—Songjiho and Hwanjinpo.

Around Hwanjinpo Lake is known as cottage country and before the war and separation of the North and South, Kim Jong il had his cottage there. We went to go see a re-creation of the exterior of it. It is sitting right on the lake and has the most beautiful scenery.

The pine trees in this area are amazing. Their scent is so vibrant. And these pines are able to withstand the strong ocean winds, you can see many of them with significant bends in the trunk.

It is not long before we reach the hotel. We get our rooms, put our paniers down, fix a bike issue and they we are off…kind of.

Sang has received word that the DMZ is closed due to some escalating tensions and/or an incident. It will be closed until the 13th. Shoot.

But. We are all still game to ride as far as we can to see what we can see. Sure enough, the registration center is completely closed and cars and buses are doing u-turns in the parking lot. We soldier on.

Luckily we do not have our paniers with us because we have found a hill and it is of consequence. We pass through the town of Goseong and ride right up to the big sign saying, “Stop, turn around.”

So we stopped, but instead of turning around right away, we talked about what this meant and what we were seeing. All of a sudden there is a soldier running towards us. Oops. What have we done?!?

Paul and Sang do all of the talking and the rest of us try not to cause an international incident. Within a few minutes, this lone soldier has backup and now the conversation is getting lively and the only word we can understand is ‘Canada’. Eek. What the is happening?!?

Turns out they were trying to get us in a bit further but the higher ups were having none of it. Shucks.

We turn around, not quite deflated because we had such a unique experience. Also, it was a reminder that these countries are still at war, the DMZ was not built to be a tourist attraction.

Back up that really big bill and back to the hotel we go. Now we have some extra free time—and we request a later meeting time for dinner—which means time for swimming in the East Sea!!  The water is perfect-clean, clear, temperate and right outside our hotel. Happy cyclists!  The locals thought we were nuts going into such cold water. Hahahaha!!!

Dinner at the hotel restaurant where octopus is their specialty. Some had that, but most had the Bibimbap and it was delicious.

After supper, the ladies gathered for an impromptu wine night and recap, but it is soon off to bed so we can tackle our last (!!) day of cycling.