Day 6, Leg 5

I have a room at the Jeokgyo-jang Motel. It's W70,000 for two nights, and as is typical for this motel, there's no WiFi, i.e., I'm going to have to rely on my GlocalMe hotspot, which converts LTE into a WiFi signal. 

Today's walk was 33K, mostly following the river but swerving away at certain points. My one nasty hill for the trip came and went, but because I'm going from south to north this time until I hit Sangju, some inclines that had been downhills proved surprisingly up-hilly. None of these lesser inclines was anything on the order of the big hill, a.k.a. Jandeung-san/잔등산, though, but if I ever do this route again, I'll have to remember the extra inclines.

Despite the threat of late-afternoon rain, the sky was cloudy but rain-free. Early-morning temperatures were cool enough to make me consider wearing gloves, but I ended up not needing them. 

At the top of the big hill, I met Paolo and two Korean ladies. The ladies were friends; Paolo simply happened to be at the hilltop when they stopped. Paolo had actually passed me while I was struggling up the hill, and I'm pretty sure he heard me fart lustily at one point. Oh, well. I'm an old man now, and I have the bad habit of farting before looking, which almost always gets me in trouble, especially when I think I'm alone. 

The ladies saw my tee from last year, and I had to explain that this year's walk was following a slightly different path. Paolo turned out to live in Singapore with his Singaporean wife; he'd done the Four Rivers from Busan to Incheon twenty years ago (he looked awfully young to me), and he was back in Korea to enjoy the autumn, which was a contrast from Singapore's equatorial heat and humidity. Paolo turned out to have lived all over the place; he'd lived and taught in Switzerland and other places; he spoke fluent English but with a slight Latin accent. Given his name, I'd guess he was either Portuguese or Brazilian, but he might have been a Spanish speaker. The ladies, being Korean, only cared about demanding that we all take a group selfie together. At their request, I took two photos. The ladies took off first; one had trouble getting started down the hill; she wasn't clear on whether this was a brake or a gear problem. Paolo wondered whether it was just fear of the downhill; she looked as though she were having some kind of mechanical trouble to me. Paolo also left soon enough, and I resumed walking. 

At my slow pace, everything takes a million years. 33K took me from 4 a.m. to around 4:30 p.m.; subtract an hour for various rest breaks, and that's about 11:30:00, or 2.87 kph. Part of the problem, too, is that I'm stopping every 50 meters to photograph something; maybe I should factor those hundreds of mini-delays into how I calculate my speed.

My feet were hurting by the time I reached the Jeokgyo-jang Motel. When I entered my room and took off my shoes, I started leaving blood spots on the floor. I immediately suspected my right big toe, but after I cleaned the floor and went out for dinner, I peeled off my socks and discovered the blister I'd mentioned yesterday had burst and ripped and started bleeding. I also felt, at points throughout the walk, as if I had some sort of bone bruise on my left foot, but ibuprofen tamped that down, and I'll have a day to rest and heal. 

I'm very tired and have to hand-wash my laundry now. Here are the ten pics I've selected for today. 

about 5600 calories burned

the moon with Jupiter to the left

a building in the moonlight

impressive tree

creepy scarecrow

up the big hill, and my only shot of Paolo

Agriculture!

This will be done in a couple of years.

flowerz (Zinnia)

the old-style house I usually never see when I'm heading to Busan

This guy has a bit of a "young Bill Murray" vibe.

I'd meant to photograph this guy last year. Nice dude. Accent's hard to understand.

PHOTO ESSAY

daring you to sit on it