Day 26, Andong Dam excursion

I slept in and got up around 7:30. Out the door at the crack of 8. The Andong Dam sits in a mountain valley, so even though the sun was out at 8, the air was cold. I had my jacket tied around my waist, but experience has taught me that, as long as I'm moving, I can withstand a certain amount of cold. My motel was right by the riverside, so it was just a matter of following the path to the dam, then locating the stairs I'd found yesterday. As I walked along, I noticed that the dam was shrouded in mist, and I worried the the view from up top would be obscured.

My instincts about the path held true, and the stairs I'd found proved to be the correct way up. The dam isn't really that high, so while the stairs were a little tiring, going up was easier, all in all, than doing my apartment building's staircase. Some stretches of the path up were steep dirt trails covered with that thick burlap/twine carpet that Koreans like to use to give hikers traction. And some of the stairs were rickety and dangerous-looking. Luckily, nothing collapsed under my weight, and I lived to tell the tale.

The path I'd chosen led up to a jeonmangdae, a raised observation platform offering a spectacular view of the river valley on one side of the dam and Andong Lake on the other. When I reached the observation deck, I decided to climb straight up it, and this had the inadvertent benefit of shortcutting the overall path by a couple hundred meters. (I could have skipped the deck and taken a longer, curving road up to the deck's top.) I was now also level with the top of Andong Dam, and by that point, a bit before 9 a.m., the fog had burned away, leaving fluffy clouds up high and a perfectly clear view below.

So I took some pictures from the deck, then walked over to the dam, hoping to walk across the spine of the dam itself. Alas! No such luck. A closed gate with a no-entry sign barred the way. What steamed me was that I saw a dude on the dam. He must have gotten there by entering from the dam's other side. But if entry was allowed from that side, then why not from this? Well, I wasn't about to walk back down, then walk all the way over to the other side just to get the awesome view I already had, so I hung around my end of the dam for a while, drinking in the view and taking pictures before finally deciding to start back down. 

I took a different route down, but common sense, and the shape of the terrain, dictated that any downhill route would get me back to where I'd started. Level with the river again, I ambled back to my motel, then took my time with showering, dressing, and prepping to leave. There was an 11 o'clock checkout time, so I was in no rush. I left the motel a bit after 10, randomly meeting the manager on my way out and handing her my room card. 

I hung around the local park like a pervert waiting to see the pretty panties run, then I got the idea to stroll across the Moonlight Bridge. The bridge was low but provided some nice views up and down the river. I turned left after leaving the bridge and headed over to something like a folk village or tourist-trappy sort of area. A pansori singer was performing for some cameras. She occasionally had to start and stop as the film crew did its work, but I enjoyed the sound of her singing all the same. 

Lunchtime rolled around, and I determined to eat at the place that had rejected me last night. Still, a little tickle told me something was going to go wrong, and sure enough: when I reached the restaurant, it was closed for the day. Bastards. Luckily, a restaurant next door was serving grilled, salted mackerel, so I got my food there, even though it meant eating a 2-person portion. Mackerel is a fatty dish, and the lunch I was served tasted fantastic, although I hated the fact that I had to pick through all the pin bones. For some parts of the fish, it was possible to gently lift the bony ridges out, but for other parts, I had to either use my fingers to pick out the flesh or chew thoroughly and spit out any bones. As a rule, I don't like having to work when I'm eating my food, but Koreans seem okay with bony fish, crab in the shell, etc. I liked what I ate, but I'd have liked it more had the cooks found a way to serve the thing boneless. I admire the grilling technique used, though: the fish's flesh was salted through and through.

I thought about taking the local bus, after lunch, to the Andong Bus Terminal (I'd changed my mind and decided against the train, which would have meant many stops), but I saw on the bus schedule that I had hit that lunchtime dead zone, as I had in Jeju, and the next bus wouldn't be coming by until around 3 p.m. Fuck that, I and my mantra said, and I decided to wait for a cab. After a few minutes of cab-lessness, I whipped out my cell phone and used Kakao Taxi to summon a cab from the roiling ether. The app told me that a cab was only a minute away, so I got ready and waited for it. 

As I was waiting, a solid-looking British woman with curly red hair wandered up to where I was standing. She seemed to be waiting for a cab, too, but there might have been a problem. When my cab pulled up and I was about to get in, the lady tried fumblingly to ask my cabbie something about her destination. I'm still not sure what she was getting at; she could have asked me to interpret for her, but she instead muttered some pidgin about her destination, showed my cabbie her phone, got some kind of answer from my cabbie, and seemed to give up, the limits of her nearly nonexistent Korean having been exhausted. I had paused politely outside the cab while the lady tried communicating with my cabbie; now that she was done, I smiled and got into my taxi.

Smooth ride to Andong Bus Terminal. The fare was W18,000; I gave the cabbie two tens and wished him a good day—my final bit of good karma leaving Andong. At the terminal, I used the mu-in ticket machine to get a bus ticket to Seoul Gyeongbu (a.k.a., Express Bus Terminal), then waited for my bus. It arrived, I got on, and as of right now, I'm chugging my way back to Seoul, another long walk now in the books.

Expect full-size pics and a wrap-up post to come out over the coming week, and then, that will be that. Thank you for joining me on this educational journey. I'd apologize for the diarrhetic torrent of photographs with each post, but in truth, I'm not sorry at all. If you're not interested, you'll skip whatever you want to skip. No skin off my balls, as my Kiwi buddy used to say. 

And here are today's pics and captions. Enjoy.

mu-in motel check-in machine

Above: if you've never done the motel thing in Korea before, this is one way to recognize many motels: the infamous Curtain in Front of the Parking Lot. This is a sop to the horny couples who go to motels for an afternoon quickie: the curtain partially obscures one's view into the parking lot by hanging below eye level for anyone who passes by on the sidewalk. It's not a perfect solution, but it's a semi-tasteful way to keep people from recognizing each other's license plates.

I was worried about the morning fogginess.

I'd wanted to photograph this shwimteo yesterday, but it was in the afternoon, and the place was infested with romantic couples shamelessly posing and caressing each other. This early in the morning, though, no one had the intestinal fortitude to be out there engaging in mild foreplay, so when I saw how abandoned the place looked, I seized my chance and snapped off a couple pictures. Ha!

Double HA!

And we're back where we were yesterday.

the stairs

A look up the first major flight:

I somehow irrationally thought it'd be stairs all the way to the top, but no: I should've known this was a typical mountain trail:

observation area about halfway up

not a bad view at all

I'm heading to the area indicated by the right-pointing arrow: 안동댐 정상 (Andong Dam jeongsang), or the Andong Dam summit.

Video of stairs leading to the jeonmangdae:

peeking through to the dam wall; we're almost at the top

These stairs were kind of scary.

standing at the bottom of the jeonmangdae

I decide to go up. This decision ends up saving me several hundred meters of extra walking.

a great view from the top of the platform

fog's all gone

The back of the jeonmangdae is level with a road that switchbacked up the mountain.

the way I could've gone

the dam's mighty flank

does not inspire confidence

looking left and down, deck at my back

looking right and up, toward the dam

watch for falling rocks

Andong Lake, the only real glimpse I'll get

안동 다목적 댐 (Andong da-mokjeok daem) = Andong All-purpose Dam

jeonmangdae from afar

The way is shut. It was made by those who are dead, and the dead keep it. The way is shut.

But there's a dude!

a look down into the river valley

just some proof that I really was here

passing the deck on the way down a different route

middle character is dong/east; not sure about the rest

plenty of tap (cairn-pagodas) near the bottom

a strange, non-standard offering to the local divinities

cairn guardian

martyr memorial

fall colors, mainly thanks to local ginkgo trees and their stinky shitberries

a nice, bloated one trying out for the role of Shelob

She's gorging herself on a woodlouse.

After checking out of my motel, I found a spot to sit and hang out while I waited for the lunch hour to roll around.

Eventually, though, I got restless and decided to cross the Moonlight Bridge.

Danger Guy, looking comically realistic

I think that says "Moonlight Bridge," or Weolyeong-gyo.

thoroughly graffiti'ed

Hae-seon loves Min-seok

temple or something tucked away in there

what it's like on the opposite bank

kids on a field trip

pansori singer and backup musicians

a better shot from the front

We're away from Jeju and back in the land of jangseung.

Great General Under Heaven

Female General Under the Earth

the motherland's future is the responsibility of the kids
(no pressure)

about to re-cross and get lunch

another wannabe Shelob

the resto that closed at dinnertime last night

The resto I wanted to go to was closed today. Fuckers.

So I skipped over to Samil Garden.

The menu says the mackerel is for at least 2 people.

I was the only one there at first.

a 2-person portion? you're kidding, right?

Still, it was pretty damn good despite all the annoying little pin bones.

At the bus terminal, I was reminded that this dancer's mask could be the main cultural symbol of Andong, which is all about preserving folkloric culture.

And thus do we conclude our 2022 adventure. Despite the setbacks and annoyances, the two trips were educational and took me out of my comfort zone, but next year, I plan to get right back into my comfort zone with a walk along the Four Rivers path. Am already looking forward to that. Expect a wrap-up post soon! Thanks for reading this far.