Maisan Mountain, the World's Only 'Couple Peaks', and Tap-sa

Two weeks after the Wando and Yeosu trips, Katie, Hallie and I rented a car again on May 17th, and this time we headed north to Maisan Provincial Park to see Maisan, or Mt. Mai, and Tap-sa, or Tap Temple.

Maisan is a very unique mountain in Korea. It has 'couple peaks', because why call them 'twin' when you can call them a 'couple'? Supposedly it is the only mountain with 'couple peaks' in the world, but I'm pretty sure that has to do with the wording more than anything else. 

Nevertheless, the mountain and park was lovely. And yes, the temple required some hiking to get to. I guess it just wouldn't be worth it if it didn't. And yes, it was completely worth it. Even for me, loather of hiking. (It's growing on me, actually. Don't tell anyone.) 

After a bit of a late start with the car because we couldn't get the tunes to work with the iPod cable (and had to drive back to the rental office to figure out the bluetooth in Korean), we set off for Maisan and arrived at the park around noon. We decided to take the little open-air trolley car up 2 kilometers to the where the road ended and we had to go on foot. We walked up about 50 fairly steep stairs, and then down about 400. (Yes, we did realize we would have to go back up those 400 stairs to return to the trolley pick-up area.) At the bottom of the stairs was a little temple and an awesome gong. A gong. I didn't hit it with the wooden pole, but other people were doing so for a small donation fee. (The temples run mostly, if not solely, on donations.) We walked down a beautiful pathway lined with hydrangeas and other lovely springtime flowers, and eventually came to the main temple, Tap-sa. It is an incredibly beautiful temple site nestled in between the couple peaks of Maisan. I didn't know what to expect, but I surely didn't expect the grandeur of it. Grandeur might be the wrong word, because it's a temple, but grand it was, at least to me. There were massive stone inukshuks in which smaller stones are stacked on top of larger stones. There were large, detailed stone statues, including that of a fierce-looking tiger and a humble Budda. The temple itself was in the middle of all of this, and the stone and stream landscaping that surrounded it made it a place I wanted to stay all day. (Except that it was pretty hot.) 

After photo ops and exploring the temple, we meandered over to the gift shop area and I finally got myself a wooden beaded bracelet from a temple that I've wanted since I came to Korea. It's got 108 beads, an 'om' symbol bead, and a larger bead that holds three general wishes. whichever Chinese character is facing outward is what I am wishing for. One means health, another wealth, and the other prosperity. If only I could tell them apart… What makes it a little more special, though, is that my bracelet represents the year of the boar, which is my Chinese zodiac animal. 

We wanted to check out a few other things that day, but we ran out of time and realized it wouldn't be any use to see them in the dark. We returned to Gwangju where I was, sadly, too tired to make better use of the car before I returned it the following morning. Instead, it sat parked downstairs while I, and my legs, fell fast asleep in my comfortable bed after climbing those 400 tortuous stairs on our way back to the trolley.