For Lindie's birthday in May we decided to skip the usual pub and noraebang crawl and go to Pareso Waterfall, or Wonderfall, as we renamed it. The waterfall is about an hour's drive from Ulsan, and basically on top of the highest mountain in Ulsan. Okay, not really on the top, but almost. It is quite a mission to get there, because if you are an unfortunate foreigner you'll have to take two busses to get to the entrance of the park at the bottom of the mountain, and then hike the rest of the way. We, on the other hand, are blessed to have our Korean brother Terry who has a car and friends with cars. We left the Saturday morning at about ten. Terry was going to take some of us with his car, and the rest would've gone with the bus. But awesome as Terry is, he showed up with two of his friends, Paul and Jack, and another car. They took us to the pension at the bottom of the mountain to drop off all of our stuff that we didn't want to take with us to the waterfall.
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FLTR: Lindie, Gerdus, Jim, Anriette, Terry, Me.
All of us at the pension. |
After dropping off our things it was time to head to the waterfall. Now, to get there, from the entrance that we used, you have to go up a 3 km, 40ยบ winding road to get to the resort. Lucky for us, Terry, Paul and Jack drove us up the mountain to the resort with cabins and camping area. We were forever greatful. The original plan was to get a cabin there, but they have a silly rule of only taking bookings on the 1st of the month.
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| All set and ready to go down to the fall. |
Unfortunately Terry and his friends couldn't stay for the party at the waterfall, because he still had to go teach some classes back in Ulsan. They literally just took us there and went back home. How awesome is that!? From the spot where we took the above photo it is just a 750m hike to the waterfall, which includes going down the most ridiculous stairs on the entire planet. Once we reached the waterfall we realised it was totally worth it.
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| B-E-A-UTIFUL! |
The photos don't do it justice. It is just amazing. A little paradise hidden from the world. Almost all of the Koreans I've met the last year have never been there. The pool at the bottom of the fall isn't very deep, but the water is freaking freezing. It was a very hot spring day so the freezing water didn't stop us, or should I say all of us, from swimming.
We picked a spot right next to the waterfall and no Koreans dared to come near us, except for one courageous girl. We even invented a fridge to keep the 'non-alcoholic' beverages chilled.
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| The view we had from our spot. |
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The fridge.
(I totally forgot to take a photo of it. Luckily Jean didn't! Thanks Jean!) |
After some chilling on the side it was time to hit the water. Gerdus and I were the first to brave the freezing pool.
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| At this point everything wet was frozen... |
Jean took a video of me becoming Alberta and got a sneak peek of some South African goodies that Lindie got us.
Okay, I know one picture of the waterfall is probably enough, but I was just so mesmerized by it that I couldn't stop snapping.
Next to brave the cold water was Jean, then Anriette, then Lindie. The photos below don't need captions to explain what was going on. They speak for themselves.
While they were trying to get used to the water I headed a little further down the stream and took some more photos.
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That is where we were supposed to come from, the easy way of getting to
the waterfall. |
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| Finally used to being frozen. |
The whole time we were there I was tempted to go to the top of the waterfall and then finally decided to find a way to get there. So I headed back up the staircase from hell to the stream that feeds the waterfall and then came to a stop at a rope that ran across the stream, telling people that the top off the waterfall is a forbidden area. Well, knowing that I can always play the stupid foreigner card, I climbed over the rope and walked to the top. Since it was still spring and it hadn't rained much at that time, the waterfall wasn't full force so it wasn't dangerous to go there. But, as people like to say here: "People die here." When I got to the edge I yelled over the roaring of the fall for Gerdus to come take a picture. The Korean lady at the bottom almost swallowed her bottle of water when she saw where I was standing. She probably thought I was a suicidal waegook.
Lindie got some genuine South African boerewors from people in Seoul and Gerdus got a notebook barbecue - perfect dinner at the waterfall. The people at the resort told us no fires, but we though we might give it a shot. After all, it was just a teeny weeny barbecue next to a huge pool of water. The coals were just ready to start barbecuing when a the courageous Korean girl ( the one I mentioned earlier ) in her hiking outfit came to tell us in perfect English that we can't barbecue at the waterfall because it is a national park. Then she added: "Oh, and you can't swim here because people die here." We were all on the verge of canning ourselves but we kept it in. So this called for the stupid foreigner card so we just apologized most sincerely and said that we didn't know. She was very nice about it and even made some small talk before she left. We all knew we were probably not going to get away with it, but it was worth a try. And if we go again we will most definitely swim again. Only people with the IQ of a garden chair die in a pool like that, seriously.
Since we were not able to go ahead as planned we killed the fire, packed everything up and headed back up the trail to the resort's office, knowing that we will have to go down that never ending winding road on foot if we wanted to get back to the pension. Once we got to the office we took a break and tried to prepare ourselves for what was to come. One Korean guy was barbecuing skewered chicken livers next to the office and decided to start feeding us. While nibbling on a chicken liver I called Terry to ask him what the chances were of us getting a taxi on the top of the mountain to take us back to the pension. As we expected he said there was no way in the world. We were not going to give up that easily. Everyone voted that I should go and ask someone at the office. So, with a little help from my dear friend Soju I went to speak to the lady at the office in my broken Korean and within seconds I ordered us not one, but two taxis. I was quite chuffed with myself. We were six people and they allow a maximum of four people per taxi. Thirty minutes later we were picked up by our taxis and taken to the pension. Yay!
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| This is at the top of the waterfall a little more upstream. |
When we got to the pension Jean had to go home, because she had a wedding to go to the next day. We asked our driver if he could take her to Eonyang to the bus terminal and he did, for free. Some taxi drivers are really awesome. There were a few other Korean families at the pension as well and the place was crawling with little Korean kids. They all lost there heads when they saw us and were around us all night. Later on they started bringing us food. First little cream puffs, then shrimps, then fish, then beer and finally juice. One of their parents even came and took a photo of them with us.
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| All too eager to pose for a photo. |
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| Our little hangout place for the night. |
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| Gerdus doing the 'braai-ing'. |
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| Lekker boerewors! |
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| Pure deliciousness, but homesick on a plate. |
After stuffing ourselves we took the party inside and not long after that we all passed out. Ugh ughm, well, not all of us.
The next morning we got up and headed to the bus stop. We had no idea what time the bus was going to be there so we just waited and waited. Forty minutes later the bus finally came.
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| The goat camp. |
While waiting for the bus we heard some goats across from across the street and the one was particularly interested in communicating with us. Neither of knew that Anriette could speak Goat, because at one point they had quite the conversation going on.
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| This is what mountains in Korea look like. Basically all of them. |
In Eonyang we transferred to a faster bus. When we got off the first one we walked past a market and saw some Korean rice-picking hats for W3,000 and we all got some. As soon as we got home Anriette and I barged into Jean's apartment to show off our hats. (Thanks for the two photos Jean!)
So that was our awesome weekend at the waterfall. We plan on going again, but next time we will definitely get a camping spot close to the waterfall. No more winding roads for us!
