hike

By Laura Teague

This is definitely a walk to test your hamstrings and calves. It’s a nice flat 3km away from Gwangalli beach around the coast, and then a grueling 5km of stairs up and down all the way to Oryukdo Cruise Wharf.

Continuing on from where Part 1 finished, this walk starts on Gwangalli Beach.

Hiking Gear

The mountains and hills of Busan are easily its best feature, both helping to confine the city’s sprawl and offering parks and natural refuges for residents to escape the stress of everyday life. Among Busan’s wide range of nature walks, the one spanning Igidae Park is among the most popular. We hiked along its 5.2 kilometer coastal trail on a recent sunny afternoon.

there are more temples here in busan than i could ever muster enough interest to visit in my year-long stint here. most people just hit the big ones, yonggungsa and beomeosa and rave about the particular beauty of the beach temple. any visit to either of these places, you can expect to see a lot of other people, hear a lot of chanting and smell a lot of incense. they’re immersive cultural experiences, to be sure, but lonely planet had it right when they named seokbulsa, the stone buddha temple, as their #1 place to visit in busan. yesterday, i hiked with a few friends from school up a mountain in oncheonjang to see it for ourselves.