Hiking Mani Mountain (마니산)

Finally! The weather has cooled down! It's such a relief not to walk outside and feel like you need to take a shower right away! Anyhow, it seems like it's been quite a while since we've had a Saturday to just throw around, and since the weather is beautiful we decided to hike Mani Mountain or Manisan. This mountain is on an island just off the west coast of the peninsula. )
We started our day relatively early, and set out by bus. The main bus comes every 60 minutes. Mark and I determined that if we were just three seconds late we would have missed our bus and then would have had to wait an hour just sitting around, so we knew our day was going to be lucky!
Anyhow, Manisan is a significant mountain because it is the birth place of Dangun (단군), the supposed father of the Korean race. It's really pretty! We started off our hike geared with Pocari Sweat, a Korean sports drink, and rice cake snacks. For the way up we took the stairs route. Yep, there are 1004 steps! It was a rough hike, but being able to hike the stairs of Gi (more commonly known as Chi) where you can receive "life force" was definitely worth it!
Well we got to the top and all we could think about was drinking something cold and sitting down! After a few seconds we began to notice that some people had ice cream. It's about an hour hike so all we could think about was "wow, these people are really prepared." Then slowly we began to notice that every single person was eating ice cream! We searched the place and found this lady sitting on the ground selling ice cream from her coolers. She must walk up the mountain a couple times of day with these coolers just selling ice cream and other cold things. It's not it vain though, the ice cream was way over priced but no one thought twice about buying it! Including us!
As we situated ourselves on a nice piece of rock (There were so many people there!) we were able to relax and take in the beautiful scenery and the main attraction! This is an alter that was supposedly built by Dangun to make sacrifices to the Gods. It's prehistoric, rumored to be from 30th century BC, so that part isn't quite proven but an emperor, in 1310, is recorded to have restored the alter. So we know that it is older than that. They still do ceremonies up here at least twice a year.

After a while of sightseeing at the top of mountain and looking at the ocean we decided to descend. To save our legs, we decided to take the "non-stair route down." However, this way was misleading because there were still 400 steep stairs! We got what we called "jelly legs." It was hard to walk! It was worth it because this route was definitely prettier! Anyhow, about a third of the way down my "jelly legs" failed me and I rolled my ankle pretty bad. I cried not because it hurt but of the prospect of having to climb the other 2/3 of the mountain. Then after crying a little, Mark and I laughed because it came at the most awkward time. Thankfully we made it down alright. :).

All in all, a good hike :)