Hump day

Here I am back in Korea, right smack in the middle of student evaluations... some welcome back present. I've been racking my brain the last couple of days for constructive phrases like "If Johnny's i.q. ever reaches 50, he should sell", and so on and so forth. For now, though, I look at the pictures and go back to a sunnier time two weeks ago this day.

Wednesday was as sunny and bright as the days before, and I set out after breakfast in hope of making it as far as Nai Thon Beach, which is supposedly a stone's throw from the airport. The locals I talked to the night before said there was no way to get there other than taking the road, but hey, the coast had gotten me this far. They had said the same thing two days ago, and here I was over halfway there. The journey consisted of more of the same--mostly passable rocky coast with a few beaches scattered here and there.

I knew this day was crucial in making up enough ground to make it to the airport by Thursday evening, so I walked non-stop until late afternoon. The reward for taking the difficult path was the opportunity to see these incredible vistas, with only the wind and the ocean as background noise. The depth of these panoramas are not adequetely represented in these photos, nor is the sheer beauty. For this shot, in example, I was atop of a petrified lava flow which formed a steep rock hill that towered over the bay. The palm trees on the other side are 50 feet tall, and I'm looking down on them. While getting to the top of this thing took a little work, getting down was as easy as walking down a steep hill, with three foot wide deep crevices every 15 feet. Like I said before, though, the grip on these surfaces is superb. Keeping my footing was not a big challenge. The challenge was to find the safest, most navigable path and keeping my concentration.
After a grueling day of further abuse to my exhausted and beat up feet, I settled on a smaller beach just down the coast from Nai Thon. I asked the locals at the restaurant about the distance to the airport and if they knew Eileen. While they had never met my friend, they did say that the airport was about 10km by road. They also said that the coast was impassable, but I had heard that one before. As I laid on the beach, scoping out the most magnificent sky I had ever seen, I pondered my next day's journey. "Perhaps I should take the road," I thought. "I braved the rocks for two days and made it this far without injury, so I should not press my luck for a third day." I would think about this through the evening, weighing each option. There was a light shower that evening, which passed in less than one hour. After the shower I sat on the beach and watched the most spectacular lightning on the distant horizon. I tried to get a photo of it, but if you've ever tried to capture lightning on camera, you'd know how easy it is. After taking a dozen photos of black sky, I gave up and decided to enjoy the show. I would fall asleep in this spot, on a comfy beach chair. The next morning I would start my trip just after sunrise and the question lingered in my dreams that night: "Will I take the road or the coast tomorrow morning?"