Namsan hike

Yesterday we hiked halfway up Namsan 남산 南山, located south of Gyeongju. The mountain has extensive hiking trails and many excellent specimens of well preserved greater-than-thousand-year-old Buddhist statuary and carvings dating from the Silla kingdom period.

Our starting point marked in red at the bottom, our lunch spot in dark blue.

I'd been hiking there seven years ago with Erma's mother. This time it was the whole gang: Erma's parents, me and Erma, and little Tek. We had no idea how much his three-year-old body would be capable of, we were hoping he might be able to walk for half an hour. As it turned out, he's a born hiker. We did a three hour trip (including lunch break) with a total elevation gain of 160m (525 feet, a tenth of a mile) and he did the whole thing himself.

In fact, he frequently scampered on ahead, making us work to keep up, even on the steeper slopes.

We got a lot higher than we originally thought we would, arriving before lunch at this lovely Buddha image.

Line-carved Buddha image 선각여래좌상 線刻如來坐像

We had a spectacular view, which included the parking lot where we'd left our car, so we could see how high we'd come.

Looking west from 194m above sea level (135m above the parking lot)

Buddhist statuary is always more appealing when fruit is involved.

Stone Buddha image 석조여래좌상 石造如來坐像 (219m above sea level, 160m above our starting point)

On our way down I got a view of one of the rock cliffs that Tek had been fearlessly scrambling up earlier, striking terror into the hearts of his parents as we attempted to keep up with them and prevent him from falling to a gruesome death.

We went on another hike this morning, less strenuous and closer to home.

Those signs are warnings about the danger of forest fires.

A close-up photo of ancient burial mounds visible among the buildings of Gyeongju, taken during our hike

From our rest stop, our car (red arrow) was visible, as was our apartment complex (green circle)