Daily Miles: 49
Total Miles: 299
Start Location: Waegwan-eup
End Location: A few miles north of Hapcheungchang Certification Booth
It poured all night last night and I was very happy to be inside. Around 6:00 AM when we woke up the rain was still going but petering off, and by the time we left the motel at 8:30 it had pretty much stopped.
The air was warm and humid and everything was kind of sticky. A few showers graced us the first several hours riding, and the clouds remained low and shrouded the hills and mountains and skyscrapers in a smoky haze.
Since we’ve been here we haven’t had a clear day. The visibility has always been hazy, even on the sunny days. I don’t know if this is just the way the weather is here or if it’s just our luck. It would be nice to get a good glimpse at the countryside before we have ridden through it, and maybe tomorrow will be our day.
The riding today was all along the river and we didn’t ride through any towns. We passed near Daegu which is a large city and saw the many towering apartment complexes dotting the hazy horizon. These high rises seem to be popular. They are a prominent feature here in every city, large or small, and they are so big. Maybe on average 20 or 30 stories. I wonder what it must be like to live in something like that. Do people get nosebleeds often that live near the top? Headaches? I’m not sure I would like it much. There’s not a lot of space to work with in Korea and I understand why they have to build housing this way. Most of the country is mountains and it’s hard to construct buildings on much of the usable land. So what you get is lots of farms and huge towering skyscraper apartment complexes repeating itself across the entirety of the country. Rows and rows of tan and white and grey buildings creating a fortress across the Korean Peninsula.
I think we have seen much of what this route has to offer. I get the feeling lately that I’ve seen this all before, and that’s because I have. The Nakdangang river is beautiful but it has run its course and I’ll be happy to arrive in Busan. Each bend looks like the last one and although pretty, lacks much variety in its structure. A river is a river is a river anyway, no matter where you go.
