Seoulscapade

Click for a bigger view . . .

Seeing Busan, the second largest city in Korea and the country’s largest port and fisheries, was a first for me, although Sunah had been before. We headed down there after Sunah was able to book a free condo room through her company. Our journey to Busan was on the super fast KTX, which is like Japan’s Shinkansen. It only took a few hours.

After arriving, we caught a bus that would take us to close to our condo. This turned out to be on the other side of town, across the other side of the harbour you see above, and over near the round building where the 2005 Apec talks were held. It was a lengthy ride that gave us views of some of the construction projects on the other side of the city. This was one thing I wasn’t expecting—the amount of construction going on, with wide expanses being developed and high-rises going up everywhere.

You’d think I would be used to all of this kind of thing in Korea, but it still amazes me to see the extent of construction taking place, constantly. We eventually got to our condo to find it was located right on the water’s edge, among a cluster of other high-rise condos and hotels, some of which were nearing completion or else had just been completed. As you can see, two of them obscured half of what must have once been a great view from our condo. The view to the right of this at least was a clear one across the water to the horizon.

My wife had organized that we would met her brother’s family and her mother in Busan that afternoon. They were driving down and were going to stay at a hotel not too far away. Eventually, we hooked up and went for a tour around central Busan in the late afternoon and night. The top picture and the one below, continuing the panorama to the right, were taken from a hilltop tower in central Busan.

That dirty great hole you see before the orange bridge is a massive construction project for a new Lotte world amusement park. Click for a bigger view . . .

What I was most keen to see in town were the location and venues for the famous Busan International Film Festival. This turned out to be an area of compressed street malls lined by multistory buildings, a collection of which housed various kinds of cinemas. We walked around the place just after dark, and even then it was packed with people. How uncomfortable it would be, I imagined, during the festival season.

After that we took a short drive to the fish markets. Everyone will tell you, if you go to Busan, you have to visit the fish markets. And Busan’s famed for seafood, so everyone aims to have fish when there—raw, preferably. I passed that tradition by because I do what I can to stay vegetarian.

While for most people a seafood market is a place of food, for me it’s a place of death. They put death on display for you, the vendors, by grabbing what looks like an eel or long fish, plunging it head first onto a nail, then stripping it of its skin. The raw red body after that writhes from the nerves working overtime. By this demonstration, vendors proudly indicate that if you want fresh, you’ve come to the right place.

Thanks, but no thanks. Moving on past stall after stall of writhing skinned fish, you see all manner of marine animal—anything from stingrays to crabs to turtles to sea dogs. Sea dogs? That’s the translated Korean name for seals. It’s an unfortunate name, for it does little to change any perception that it is not food, given that numbers of Koreans eat dogs. I saw chunks of seal flipper poking out of a bucket.

We didn’t eat around here, but fish was on the menu the next night after a hard day’s touring. The next day we toured a few sights with Sunah’s brother’s family, mainly outside of Busan. One stop was on a hill top from which we could look back and see our condo. It was there, a tall building behind the tall buildings, just beside the other tall buildings. The APEC conference building stands at the end of that little peninsula in front.

One of the main places we went to was a famous Buddhist temple. I don’t know why. When you’re visiting Busan, you just go there. As usually with tourists spots like this, it was packed with people. Scammers were also extracting entrance fees from unsuspecting motorists, like us, on the road well before the temple’s carpark. Maybe they were real Buddhist monks, maybe they weren’t. Buddha would say they weren’t. Many drivers just ignored them and drove past.

That night we went to a well-known beach-front tourist area on Busan’s outskirts. The long beach front drive was abuzz with diners and revellers, all no doubt with their mind’s on raw fish. That was our main purpose in being there, or rather that was everyone else’s—mine was simply to take in the sights.

We ended up at a restaurant whose first floor was entirely taken up with knee high fish tanks and their many varieties of live, splashing fish. Customers choose the fish they want then head upstairs to a table. We followed the same routine. Before long, the freshly killed fish arrived at the table in sushi slices and everyone ate more than their fill. I grazed side dishes and avoided the fish—unheard of, I guess, in Busan.

The next day was more sightseeing on the outskirts of Busan. A memorable part of this was after we paid a guy at the top of a cliff for a coastal boat cruise, and then clambering down the cliff to the boat, only to have the boat’s captain asked for more money, saying that there weren’t enough people to make the trip worth while. An huge argument ensued between the captain and Sunah’s brother, whose case, quite rightly, was that it wasn’t his job to compensate the captain his misfortune of a slow day.

A young policeman stood by on the rocks, doing nothing, as required of his post. I think he was for show, or there to report any tourist related infractions, rather than to stop them. In any case, as a younger man, he did not have much authority over the situation, according to Korean society’s age-based hierarchy.

The upshot was that we left to clamber back up the cliff’s steep steps, with the boat captain shouting after us that he was sorry, that we should come back for a cruise at the normal price. It was all very funny. And it was a further insight into the Korean psyche, where sometimes the idea of being obliged, being considerate to others and being part of one big, genetically pure happy family kind of gets distorted, in the minds of some, into the twisted idea that “others should carry my load.”

Actually, we might have even run out of time if we had taken that boat trip. We had to make it back to the train station and it took a while to get through the traffic. In a rush, we were dropped off by Sunah’s brother at the station and hastily boarded the KTX back to Seoul. What was the biggest lesson I took away with me? If you’ve got any spare cash, invest in Busan real-estate. The place is booming, perhaps even more on land than on sea.

Jeju Island is known as the Hawaii of Asia, an island populated by volcanic craters and whose landscapes bear a dark hue because of volcanic rocks and soils. The mother of all volcanoes on Jeju is the dormant Halla Mountain, which dominates at the centre of the Island. Mt. Halla, in fact, is all of Jeju Island. We decided to climb that mother.

You can see in the photos below what are merely the foothills–hard going enough. There was no snow anywhere else on Jeju but there was plenty on the mountain at that time of year and it made for an exhausting yet exhilarating hike. I’ll get to that in a moment.

Our trip came about when my wife Sunah managed to book a condo apartment at the Poonglim Resort through her company. Like the company condos we had stayed at on trips elsewhere, it was free. We strategically flew there before a long weekend and left as the holiday hordes began arriving. This meant that the condo was barely half full. We almost felt like the only ones there, as our condo apartment was at the end of an apartment block wing, which opened directly onto a large grassed terrace and overlooked the ocean.

Traveling around, we used local buses and taxis. On our first day, our first stop was the famous Cheonjiyeon Waterfall, not far from where we were staying, near Seogwipo Port; however, it wasn’t the season for it and not much water was falling. In an case, waterfalls have to be huge to interest me, and I wouldn’t call this one huge. It was a pretty spot and the area was relaxing to walk around in, but I was keen to get on and see my first volcano crater.

We headed next to the Samgumburi crater, which is relatively small but is near a main road and does not require climbing to get to. We took a taxi straight there, thinking it not a lengthy journey. It was longer than expected because the island is bigger than the impression gained from a glance at a map. The convenience and time saved with a taxi, however, was worth it.

After that we caught a bus to the Jeju Folk Village in Pyoseon, where we stayed until closing. Here we could see the traditional way in which the dungdweegi (dung pigs) were kept, and perhaps still are. There were live ones in the pens in the village that probably weren’t only for show.

I’d heard about the dung pigs, and knew about the reputation of Jeju’s pork, famed for it’s texture and flavor. As a vegetarian of course I was loathe to sample it. I was also troubled by the correlation between the quality of pork and that it was from pigs reared on shit, presumably human. The other problem I have with it is that in the natural world, most animals do not go out of their way to eat shit, when there natural diet is available.

You can see below a demonstration (dry rehearsal only) of the old-style feeding procedure. That’s me atop a specially designed squat that has a hole leading to the dining area in the pig pen. Next to it is a postcard depiction of the hijinks. Sorry, not that funny to me.

The next day was the mighty Halla mountain climb. Again, we employed the convenience of a taxi, but things were a little slippery as we journeyed up the mount. We were dropped at a crowded parking area, which on this day was the limit for vehicles; the rest of the way had to be on foot.

Not knowing what was ahead, we trekked a paved road that just kept going on and on. Eventually, we arrived at another rest area with restaurants and shops at the bottom of mountainous terrain. It had already taken us a couple of hours just to get to this point, and we were pretty weary, but we hadn’t even started climbing.

After some food and rest, we bought what were perhaps the most valuable things we purchased on Jeju: strap-on boot spikes. Then we set out on the climb. The views were magnificent, with thick snow, icicles and a frozen waterfall offering magical sights. There were plenty of other climbers about—crowds are seemingly the norm on any mountain in Korea, even before the arrival of long-weekend vacationers.

After ascending some mounts and passing through a half buried forest area, we ventured onto a kind of snow plain that led to another rest area. The snow was so deep here that further progress was not allowed, and besides, it was late afternoon and just about closing time. Everyone was being told to clear off. That we did, following the trail down the other side of the mount, again over a snow plain, with surreal views that included small secondary craters, and then down into an extensive forested area thick with snow.

Many hikers were tobogganing down narrow paths, sitting on plastic bags or backpacks. I did the same with my backpack (my preferred mode of transport). Even doing that, off and on, it took quite a while to descend the mountain and arrive at a larger parking area. From here we walked a road to reach the main road, where we could catch a bus into Jeju and then back to our resort.

It was certainly a relief to sit down on that bus when if finally came. Later, the evening was spent imbibing alcoholic refreshments to take the edge of the aches and celebrate our day with a well-earned feeling of accomplishment.

Our last day was less arduous. We simply visited the Botanical Garden or “Yeomiji” near our resort and walked along the coast back towards our condo, marveling at the coastal volcanic formations. These formed apparently from the rapid cooling of lava flows as they hit ocean water.

Later we visited one of the famed lava caves or tunnels, which were huge course ways created by ancient lava flows. There was a sign in one informing about a shelf that indicates the level the lava came to; as if a snipe at dummies, it said: ‘It is called a “lava shelf,” obviously because it looks like a shelf.’ That cracked me up. At a park surrounding one of these ancient formations, they had 300 year old bonsai trees on display, which for me were equally intriguing.

Altogether, it was a great trip and one not as expensive as people often warn it might be. It did not have that much of a touristy feel about it either, not to me at least, but perhaps that was because of the time we chose to go there. When at the airport readying to depart, we saw the holiday crowds arrive and were glad we’d avoided them.

Jeju used to be practically the one and only honeymoon destination for Koreans. One of the main reasons for that was because, not so long ago, ordinary Koreans were forbidden to leave the country. It was the main Island getaway. Now Koreans go further afield for honeymoons, but many still choose Jeju, and I could see why.

I know, it does look like I’m sitting in a giant cocktail, but I made certain not to taste it.

It was of many hot tubs at a water park called Water Pia, near the Soruk Mountains on the east coast of Korea. The Sorak Mountains, commonly known to everyone as Soraksan, is where Sunah and I went on a trip in Autumn, 2004. The place is famous as the largest and highest mountain range in Korea. We went there because of that, because Sunah had managed to book one of her company’s condo apartments, which we could use for free, and because it promised to be spectacular, as it was at the peak of the season for leaves turning bright red and orange. Why we should not have gone there is because of this: we arrived there at the peak of the peak season.

We arrived at our condo at night, the one you can see beyond this hot tub at Water Pia. We’d taken a bus from Seoul and then a taxi to the condo at the foot of the Soraksan range. It did not seem too crowded, but that might have been because people were off doing things. The next day, we sought out a taxi to take us on a day tour, a common thing to do and not overly expensive.

Our first stop was this Buddhist temple on the coast, Naksansa, a standard stop for tourists. It was not too crowded either, probably because it was early morning. From here we headed up into the mountains. This was when the hoards of people present at Soraksan began to appear. This is when we struck our first traffic jam.

Much of what we saw was from the window of the taxi, unless we stopped somewhere, not that there were many places to park. It was bumper to bumper up the mountain. But because of the traffic, we frequently came to standstills overlooking magnificent valleys. The driver later dropped us off at the entrance to a hiking path and we were to meet him out the other end of the trail in a couple of hours. At last we could get closer to nature.

It was good to get out of the taxi, but human traffic on the nature hike was sometimes like the traffic on the roads, choked. The scenery was fantastic, with the richest of reds in the leaves. Sometimes it was actually possible to take a picture without a human in it. Often you had to wait your turn to gain vantage points for scenic shots. It was hard to detect tranquility out there amongst nature.

We emerged at the end of the trail and had a welcome rest and some lunch. It was then on to see Baeckdamsa. The driver dropped us at the entrance to the park where the temple is located. We had to take a shuttle bus from here. Because of the hoards the wait time was intolerable. We decided to walk the few kilometers.

I highly recommend the walk. It’s most refreshing, except that if you have already been hiking before it, you should conserve your energy. The few kilometers took longer than expected and much of it was uphill. It was hard going. The scenery was great, oh, yes, great scenery all the way.

The scenery around temple was great, too. The temple itself was like other temples, nothing new of note that I could see. After a look around, we joined the truly massive queue for the shuttle bus back out of the valley. It was dark by the time our turn came. At that point we were completely buggered. The taxi driver, as diligent as ever, was waiting for us when we got back to the entry point, and he took us back to the condo.

The next day, a Sunday, we planned to do some serious hiking, up nearby mountain peaks, and to take in some more of that wonderful scenery. It was around 8 when we left the condo, all packed for the hike, nice and early. We had planned to take a cable car up to the peaks and hike down. It was around 8.15 when we hit a traffic jam in a town a kilometre or two from the entrance to hike trails and the cable car. I took this as a bad sign. Who would have thought we’d hit a traffic jam early on a Sunday morning? With no way out and no where else to go, we stuck with it.

Eventually, we were dropped near a park entrance. You can see what greeted us. It was interesting to note that buses did not stop at the entrance or were not frequent. Taxi drivers, as a consequence, were making huge sums simply ferrying people from the nearby town to the park entrance and back, just a few kilometres. It was a huge day for them, but this was only impressed on me later, as I will soon relate.

Undeterred by the crowds, Sunah lined up for the cable car tickets. She was told the wait for the cable car would be around 8 hours, yes, 8 hours! Needless to say, we did not purchase any tickets. In fact, I’d had enough, and we decided to abandon the whole day of hiking. It was a wise decision. Then we walked for a while back towards the town. People were still coming and going in droves, walking and by taxi, as you can see below.

We began looking out for a taxi. Not many would stop for us. One did near town, however. We got in and Sunah told him to head for the condo. At this the driver drove off, making a fuss about something. He was muttering, smiling, shaking his head, sighing. It went on for too long, and obviously, something was wrong. I asked Sunah about it and she asked the driver. We learned that taxi drivers make all their cash taking people from the town to the park gate and back. It’s a short trip, perhaps worth no more than the flag charge, but if you do one of those every five minutes, that’s a big day. We had just ruined his big day.

Because the driver had to take us out of the area, he would miss out on hours of those lucrative short runs. He even suggested that the whole day was ruined because the traffic jam back into the mountains was so congested that it would not be worth going back. We sympathized with him and gave him a tip. I don’t think it improved his level of happiness.

After dumping all of our hiking gear at the condo, we headed over to Water Pia nearby, with its pool and slides and hot tubes of all kinds. This is where we spent the morning, just soaking and relaxing. Our decision to quit the mountains had been a wise one. After the park, we caught an afternoon bus back to Seoul. We’ll probably go back for more of Soraksan, but we’ll pick the time with more care next time.

Picasso’s Massacre in Korea, one of his most political works, is based on a massacre that occurred near a place called No Gun Ri, a small town south of the city of Daejeon, in July of 1950.

I’d heard about this still controversial incident before coming to Korea, when I caught part of a documentary on massacres committed by the US military during the Korean War. After I arrived here I heard more about it—there was even rumour of a movie. Then I bought a book on the subject, the Pulitzer Prize winning The Bridge at No Gun Ri. It suddenly struck me while reading this that I might as well just go there and have a look for myself. So I did, and more turned up on the trip than I would have thought possible.

It took a bit of searching to find out where exactly No Gun Ri was and how to get there. It’s just a small village.

(Update: a new site dedicated to the No Gun Ri incident is now here. The less comprehensive English version is here and has information on where No Gun Ri is.)

Eventually, I got everything organized and headed out to Daejeon one long weekend with Sunah (my girlfriend at the time). We stayed at a hotel in Daejeon, and on one of the days we took a bus trip to visit Beopjusa Temple—site of a huge 33 metre bronze Buddha and setting for Bruce Lee’s unfinished last film Game of Death.

On the next day, we took a short train trip to No Gun Ri and the massacre site. Coincidentally, the time we went was just before the anniversary of the incident. As the story goes, people were forced out of their villages by US troops and onto railway tracks. They were making their way along these railway tracks when they were subject to a US air force bombing and strafing attack.

Many were killed then and there while others scattered. Many sought refuge in the large railway underpass or trestle near the village of No Gun Ri. However, they were shot at by US soldiers over a period of three days. There were only a handful of survivors.

You can still see the bullet holes on the walls. I expected more but many were plastered over by a post-war right-wing government after the war. It’s possible to see in the pictures the different wall colorings that reveal the whole sections that were plastered. At some sections, wire fences have been erected to prevent vandalism, and chalk circles highlight the bullet holes.

It was perhaps because of this repressive regime that details of the massacre were not well known. The book I mention on the incident didn’t come out until the year 2001. Some survivors are still around, their scars backing up their stories. Each year now there is a commemoration at the No Gun Ri site. The sign across the arch in the picture above is giving notice of the one due in a few days.

Some people also sought refuge in a drain hole, picture below, a quiet place with trickling water and a little pond. It’s up the track from the underpass, closer to where the villagers were first attacked. Getting to this required us to do a bit of hiking along narrow paths on a forested hillside beside the train track. The paths were established but obviously not well used. It was along one of these paths that, incredibly, I uncovered a shell casing.

I had pondered whether there might be military objects lying around, but reason told me that the place must have been scoured over many times in the past, by curiosity seekers, by investigators, perhaps with metal detectors, and by local hikers. Everything surely would have been picked up or unearthed. Even so, I still kept and eye out, and suddenly there it was, beside a track, a shell casing. I was somewhat elated, as you could imagine.

What comes to mind, however, is that if it was so easy to find after all of these years, and after so many people had been through the area, maybe there are a lot more lying around. This said a lot to me about the amount of lead that must have been expended in the area.

During our time there, a trickle of site seers stopped by, more than I would have thought. As is often the case, I was the only foreigner around, and the locals seemed glad that a foreigner was acknowledging the site of a war crime. In fact, I don’t remember seeing any other foreigners on the whole trip.

Although we didn’t have the time, I had wanted to visit the Naktong River where the US military had blown up the Waegwan Bridge while it was still packed with refugees. (It was not the first time this kind of thing had been done.) There’s a new bridge there now with a plaque nearby. After No Gun Ri, we took the train back to Daejeon, passing over the trestle we’d just visited, and from Daejeon, we headed straight back to Seoul.

This is a view from the balcony of the condo Sunah and I stayed in at the ski resort of Yong Pyong over Xmas of 2004. The resort is near the peninsula’s east coast about 4 hours from Seoul. We arrive just before Xmas and had a day and a night on crowd-free slopes. This meant that we rarely had to wait long for ski lifts and there was plenty of room for loosing control.

I knew nothing about snowboarding but Sunah had been a few times before. She gave me some beginners lessons and I got the hang of it pretty quick. Without the crowds, we both got in plenty of practice.

Of course, by Xmas day the crowds had descended. Long waits for the ski lifts and people getting in your way made it less fun. If I ever go again, I’ll definitely avoid vacation days. Here’s a view from one of the slopes back down to our condo. You can see how open and unimpeded things were.

At night, they turn on the lights and you can stay out there into the early morning. We snowboarded for a while at night, but it was a bit precarious because patches of ice couldn’t be spotted easily. I hit one of these and the board went out from under me. I fell back and went down hard, my head slamming into the ice and bouncing, giving me that sickly feeling you get. I thought I might have done some real damage. I must have thick skull because I continued to function normally. I did, however, quit the slopes soon after that blow.

My co-worker and I were fortunate enough to be allowed on a 3 day bus trip. That’s us above enjoying the experience. It was a special event organized especially for foreign students. But someone at our institute thought to ask us along, as foreign employees. The whole weekend trip would cost around $25. What kind of idiot would say no?

We were given information and application sheets that were all in Korean. So neither of us had any idea of where we were going. All we know was that it was south, which we could have guessed because if you head north of Seoul you hit North Korea. However, we did find out that there would be a steel works, a mountain, a temple, and a massacre grave site.

That’s all we had to go on. I was bothered to much, not for the price, and in any case, I was beginning to get used to receiving little information from Koreans. It didn’t get much better. When the organizers were contacted on our behalf and asked what we should take, the response was “nothing much.” The funny thing was that these guys weren’t trying to be funny.

I was at fault too, in all of this, because I didn’t think to take a map. I didn’t think I’d need it. That’s perhaps the thing I missed most, something to work out where the hell we were. Only after I got back was I able work that out.

This was our first stop, Namwon city, Jeollabuk-do province. This is the location of a famous legend that involves a pretty young girl–as usual, a betrothed and a bad guy. The girl’s love leaves town to do a government exam, and Chunyang stays behind where she is pressured to loose her virtue. Basically stays loyal to her man despite much pressure, like a good girl should, and eventually he returns, just in the nick of time to rescue her and live happily ever after. For her love and chastity, Chunyang is the model of a traditional Korean woman.

After a walk around, we all had lunch, and then headed further south.

The place above was our first stop, a folk village where people actually lived and worked. I didn’t have a clue where it was. After the trip I consulted a map and concluded that it must have been Cheonghakdong Folk Village, beside the Jiri Mountain ranges. It was interesting and picturesque. From the ramparts, you could watch farmers spray fields, themselves and their families with huge clouds of green colored power, which looked distinctly like pesticide of some kind. That was also picturesque. There was also a drunk passed out on the ramparts. It wouldn’t be Korea, if there wasn’t!

After here we headed to our hotel near the Jiri Mountains. We sorted out our shared rooms, had dinner, and were treated to a show of traditional music. I’m not one for these kind of shows, but when the women were soloing on the stringed instruments, and coming up with sounds that reminded me of Jimi Hendrix, I found a new enthusiasm for the performance.

Later, my work colleague and I headed into the town—whose name I will perhaps never know—to seek out a Jim Jil Bang, or oven room place, to sweat out the grime and generally relax. We found a small one, with rooms that were not nearly hot enough, but it was good enough.

Next morning we headed to this famous Buddhist temple in the Jiri mountains called Hwa-eomsa. It was Autumn, as you can tell, the time of year when hoards of people take to the mountains all over Korea to try and enjoy the scenery. This day, thankfully, not many people were there, at least not at the temple.

From here we headed further south, according to my guestimation, to Gwang-yang, which is where we visited some kind of Posco Steel presentation center, before heading on to the massive Posco steel works on the coast. We had lunch here after a tour of a section of the plant, where we were not allowed to take pictures. As you see below, we took pictures.

This was pretty amazing. A massive lump of steel goes in one end and comes out the other as a huge roll of sheet metal. From memory, a roll is churned out every 5 minutes or so, and each roll is worth around $70,000. And it’s all automated. There were just no people around, except us, on a walkway high above it all, taking pictures we weren’t allow to take.

From here it was further south to a small island called Odongdo, whose significance eluded me then, and eludes me now, but it was nice and, once again, picturesque. The island had a full scale model of one of those turtle battle ships that help Korea defeat the Japanese in an ancient war or two. Completing the scene, some cute kids were out on an outing there as well.

From there, we headed even further south, to one of the southern-most parts of the peninsula, called Hyang-iram. It’s the site of a famous Buddhist temple high on a mount, and is frequented by revellers on occasions like the first day of the new year to greet the first rays of sunlight to hit the peninsula. On this day there was quite a few sight seers as well as us. The place is also where you can get the freshest of seafoods, if you’re into that kind of thing.

Our tour buses are way below, on that little peninsula. The famous temple was quite a climb to get to, which we didn’t realize, an exhausting trek of endless steps and narrow passages between rocks. But if you visit the area, it’s the done thing. I just looked on it as good exercise. After getting back down, it was a relief to slump back into a bus seat and drive through the night back to the hotel.

We headed home the next day, and on the way took in the Naejangsan National Park, north of where we were and towards the east coast. By this time, the weather was turning foul, not that that bothered me in the least. It made for some quite surreal sights, with all the color and people walking around in colored raincoats. This place was packed with visitors. Much more like the usual for the season. We were given a couple of hours to walk around and enjoy the sites.

We headed home after this stop. The only thing to note on this leg was a Chinese gentleman, I believe, who was sitting on the bus a seat of two behind us, my co-worker and I and some girls we had befriended. This Chinese guy took his shoes off, which released the pungent aroma of foot odor, and on top of that, he would clear his throat expressively so that you could hear the phlegm tumbling and rasping with each hawk. I was attempting to read a book on Korean poetry so it was not a pleasant experience. We snickered with each hawk, but after a while it wasn’t funny anymore, and we just had to put up with it. Upon our arrival, I think several of us were traumatized by the experience and could not bear to hear that retching sound again.

Altogether, is was a well-organized and full tour, except that it might have been nice if we knew where we were and what we were looking at from time to time.