Butterfly Festival take 1

By Stephanie


Ok. It’s been a long time comin’, but finally going to write about the Butterfly “Festival”. Before I get to the actually description of the “Festival” I will describe the Saturday. We met in Seoul for a 4 hour bus trip to the South. The first day consisted of a hike and a “natural” hot springs. Our expectations were pretty far from what actually happened. The first part of the hike was on a flat, wide, dirt path that wound its way into the mountains. There were a couple nice waterfalls and a mountain temple along the way to break up the monotony. It was pleasant, but not what we’d call “hiking.” We climbed up a metal staircase to a random suspension bridge, random because it led to nowhere. We found this out the hard way. We walked across and milled around for ten minutes until they signaled for us to come back. Evidently looking up at it from the path down below was not sufficient we must walk across it to fully experience the grandeur. It was pretty cool, but completely random. Then we came across an interesting “garden” of sorts with statues depicting mankind’s favorite past time. Think about it and get back to me.

Then we climbed concrete stairs up to a dammed reservoir and from there is where the real “hiking” began. Evidently there is no in-between with Koreans. It’s either a leisurely walk on a completely flat path or a 45 degree incline with metal steps built into the mountain side or a rope to pull yourself up with, because they don’t believe in switchbacks The funny part was, every time we’d ask the guide “how much further?” (and this coming out “How (breath) much (breath) further (breath)?”) He’d say “Five minutes.” The end of the trail was just five minutes away for about two hours. But I suppose this was a fat burning preparation for the nude hot springs to come.

We finally finished our scramble and came across the “natural” hot springs. We thought we’d endeavored all this way for nice small pools created by river run off, but we found instead a resort nestled into the mountains. It wasn’t a bad thing, just false advertising. Luckily men and women are separated, but still they didn’t allow swimsuits so that was an interesting experience. You’re already on display being a foreigner, but now imagine you are naked and you’ll get a glimpse of how we felt. It was an experience, a been there, done that, no need to revisit experience.

After our foray into the nudist colony, we were taken to the “Best Galbi Restaurant in Korea.” At least, this was what our guide claimed. I’ve had really good Galbi before and not from “renowned” restaurants and this didn’t hold a candle to those. It was quite funny in a ridiculous way solely because it reinforced our idea that our guide had pathology for either lying or raising expectations with the explicit hope that the actual thing would not measure up.