Mt. Sorak
Here I am with the sea behind me. |
Patricia standing in front of the sea. |
Here is a more rocky section of the coast. |
Up on the hill is a big Buddha statue. Someone told us that a temple in the area recently bruned down. The hillside didn't look too good near the top, so we guessed that might be the one they were talking about. |
Here is a small fishing area along the coast. |
They had some fish hung out to dry. |
Here is a close up of the line of drying fish. |
After visiting the sea we rode to our hotel for the night. This is a silhouette of the mountains outside of my hotel room. |
Another view of some of the mountains on the balcony. |
A view looking in the other direction toward the sunset. |
Here is Mt. Sorak. There is a cable car that runs up to the top. We would be taking the cable car in the morning. The bright light in the picture is the cable car. |
We decided to get up early in the morning and walk up to a Buddhist temple only 5 minutes up the trail from our hotel. It wasn't part of the tour, it was something we just did on our own. Here is a picture of the big Buddha statue on the trail to the temple at about 6:30am. |
One of three bridges that leads to the temple. |
A different view of the same bridge. |
The bridge had little dragon heads carved on it along the bottom, here is a close up. |
Here is a long view of the dragons. |
Another bridge leading to the temple. |
Some dragon carvings along the steps of the temple. |
A view of some of the temple buildings in the early morning. This temple was called Kukrakbojeon. According to a sign it was dedicated to the Amitabha triad which includes: Amitabha buddha, Avalokitesvara the merciful goddess and Mahasthama-prata the wise goddess. |
Here is one of the 4 guardians at the beginning of the temple. I believe they are supposed to guard the four cardinal directions. This one has a small dragon in his arms. |
A guardian with a sword. These statues were very dusty. |
A guardian with a lute. |
A guardian with a spear. |
Some more temple buildings. |
We walked a bit further up the path to another small temple. There were supposed to be three, but we didn't know how far up the last one was, and didn't have a lot of time. |
Both temples had some nice carvings of dragons, but it was still too dark out to get a good picture of the other ones. These came out ok though. |
Another shot of the dragons. |
A painting of a mountain spirit. |
A very nice picture of a crane on a roof beam with a bell attached to it. |
Patricia likes horses so she wanted a picture of her with this horse painting. |
A picture of me with a dragon fountain. |
Patricia leaning on the same fountain. |
A few monuments that we saw on the way back. |
A Buddhist monk sweeping. |
Another shot of the monk sweeping from a different angle. |
One last picture of the monk showing some of the surrounding buildings. |
Another picture of the Buddha statue as we passed on the way back. |
Here is the gate that leads to the temple trail. It was too early in the morning to photograph it on the way there. This is the back end of it. |
There were carvings of dragons on the underside of the gate, one facing the front, one facing the back. |
The other dragon. |