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Published: June 14th 2010
Pension
This is where we stayed. I heard about a weekend trip to Inje from a friend I met during training. It included paint balling, white water rafting, atv riding and optional bungy jumping. After checking to be sure that both the Korea vs. Greece game, and the US vs. England game WOULD be showing where we were staying, I got Jake and two other friends to sign up.
We left from Cheongju Saturday and made the bus trip to Seoul JUST in time to meet another bus full of foreigners that were going on our trip. Then we had another 2 hour bus drive to Inje. Let me start with the bus drive. I lost count at some point, but we went through at least 12 tunnels. Each of these tunnels was built into beautiful, green, luscious mountains! It was gorgeous! 70% of South Korea is mountains. They aren't bare or brown either, they are all incredibly green and thick. Anyway, I liked the drive! ha ha
We finally arrived in Inje and it was nice and rainy...actually it wasn't nice at all. And I was a wearing a tank top and shorts of course! Because it's supposed to be hot here! Our first
World Cup
Watching the game outside at the pension activity was paint balling...in the rain...I was freezing and had nothing separating me from the rain or the paintballs so I did my best to hide in the corner and not get hit. Pretty lame I know...but as soon as I saw the huge welts they were leaving on other people, I concluded that there was no way that would be "fun" for me. I did have fun, however, watching Jake, Nick, and Jason run around, crouching down, firing away at people like they were about to save the world. It was hilarious. Me and another one of the girls were laughing about how the boys get so into it.
I was glad when that was over. Not that I didn't have fun, but I was freezing. Paint balling never quite made it on my bucket list, but I'm glad I tried it. I did get hit twice, and I have bruises to prove it. Next, we drove our bus back to our "pension" which is apparently a form of a hostel. I'm still a little unsure exactly of what constitutes a pension, but it is a place where you can sleep. We watched the Korea game, which was
awesome! They won 2-0 after every other game had ended in a tie. We were in the middle of no where, literally up in mountains, and every time Korea would score you could hear screams throughout the area. It was awesome! After they won, an old Korean man stood up and clapped and told us all "thank you, thank you." Ha ha as if we helped them win by cheering. And of course, we watched the US game. Well, I slept and the guys watched. It started at 3:30AM local time.
We cooked a big Korean style dinner, and sat around a fire, and introduced ourselves to everyone on the trip. There were about 30 or so people. Most of them were teachers, and I think just one was in the Navy. There was an older couple from Canada that Jake and I spent a lot of time talking to. They are retired high school teachers and now they're just exploring Korea together and teaching here. Pretty cool.
The next morning, we woke up and drove to the bungy jump/sling shot/ATV riding. The first thing my group did was ATV. We got to ride them along the river
that was next to huge beautiful mountains. I loved it! Jake thought that the person with the most mud on them won a prize or something and he was covered in mud for a large part of the day. It was stuck to his face, ha ha. After that, we could bungy or sling shot. Jake and I were pretty hesitant about whether we wanted to do either. We had said that if we wanted to we would...but all day we just kind of sat there and watched...and finally we were both like "ya, i don't really need to do it." So we didn't. Jake was terrified the last time he did it, and although I had a fun experience, the actual bungy jumping part isn't that awesome, so we just watched. Our friends Nick and Jason did it so I kept busy taking video of them. I don't want to sound like a bungy snob, but it is kind of hard to do a 63 meter bungy jump when you did one that was 216 meters. I checked wikipedia today and Bloukrans bridge is now the THIRD highest bungy in the world 😞 Sad. Still counts though! It was
the first when we did it!!
Okay, now it's time for the exciting part! I will first note that no one was seriously injured during this. Jake and I are both alive, with only minor scrapes...
Whitewater rafting. We drove along the huge, beautiful mountains for a while and finally stopped at the white water rafting place. Me and a few others on the bus wondered aloud if we'd be rafting down a small creek. We were doubtful that we'd see very much "white water." HOWEVER, we did. There were 10 of us in our boat, plus 1 guide...so 11 in total. That's a lot of people on one boat! But anyway, after a quick tutorial on HOW to raft, we started down the river with our Korean rafting guide. He spoke "1,2, stop, go," and "back" in English and that's about it. Luckily, we had 1 Korean girl in our raft and she did a fair amount of translating.
There were 4 actual rapid sections of our 2 hour rafting session. We got through the first one successfully and I figured it wouldn't get much more exciting for the rest of the day. However...when we got
to the second set of rapids we ran into another boat that was part of our trip. They were kind of stuck in a rut and waiting for us to pass by them. We literally bumped into them and off of them, which caused us to hit a big rock sideways, instead of from straight on. I should add that the river was fairly low so we were warned that there would be many rocks that we may get stuck on. We tipped up against this huge rock and I knew we were tipping over. At first, I was thinking...it's okay, it's rafting, people tip over all the time, right? Okay, here we go. I was on the side of the boat that went up so I landed on a few people and when I came up for breath the first time, I saw the boat tipped over and I saw heads (helmets) underneath the boat. That's when I started freaking out. I thought for sure that someone was going to be trapped under the boat...I didn't have much time to think about it because we tipped out at the top of the rapids...and we had a long ways to
go down. We were moving quickly...just our bodies floating around and over rocks. My first thought was to get to the edge, but we were moving really fast and I knew I couldn't beat the current. There were rocks everywhere so I quickly tried to grab on to the boat, thinking that that was the only way I could keep my head above water and not go under. As soon as I grabbed hold of the rope on the side of the boat, I looked ahead and saw a helmet smash into a big rock that I was headed straight for. Somehow, the rock had a small opening and I ducked me head a little bit and managed to miss it completely! The worst part, at this point, was that my contacts were gone and I couldn't see anything very well. I was horrified because 1, I couldn't see other people or where I was going, and 2, I wouldn't be able to see for the rest of the day! I started freaking out though, having seen someone's head smash against the rock. Everything happened extremely quickly but the next thing I remember is hearing Jake say "Bethany" and swimming
Mud
Go jake towards me. He grabbed me and we swam towards the edge and got out of the water. A few other people had gotten out there, and the rest of them were downstream. The guide had gotten back in the boat and was helping people into it. He yelled to us to stay where we were. Shoes and oars were floating down the now calm part of the river. I was shaking and in some short of shock I'm sure because I didn't really talk. I could feel a river of tears inside me and I was trying to calm down. Jake quickly pointed out an abrasion on my forehead where I had hit a rock. I had a helmet on but it was kind of big and more towards the back of my head. This is about the time my contacts came back. They hadn't fallen out, they had just gone up in my eyes somewhere so I was glad to have them back. This is also about the time I started to feel that my head had hit a rock. We looked around and made sure everyone was accounted for. I honestly couldn't believe that everyone was okay. Three
people had actually gone under a rock. Like it had a big ledge and they went under it, under water. The older couple from Canada was in our boat and as soon as I saw the man I saw blood on his forehead. It ended up being a small cut but when you're in that moment and see blood, it's pretty scary. The look on his face was also pretty scary...and he didn't say much else for the rest of the day. The only blood I found on me was near my elbow and it was really small.
When we were altogether, we walked downstream a bit to the rest of the group. I'm not gonna lie, I felt like crying for a good 15 minutes afterwards and every time we talked about it it got worse. I couldn't really even remember how it happened or anything leading up to the crash...throughout the day we all shared stories of what happened to each of us and what we saw.
We met up with a bunch of other rafters and did a jumping rock for a while and then got back on our rafts for the second half of
the trip. As soon as we started rowing, Nick turned around and said something about not wanting to crash again. He read my mind...I was suddenly rather hesitant. Nick and I were in the back of the boat with the guide. Not 10 minutes later we get to the third major rapid, the "most fun" of the four, said our translator. There was a wide opening and then a small opening to the left side. Our guide directed us towards the smaller opening and none of us really knew why....then we saw him panic and yell "wait, wait" while digging his oar into the water and against rocks and by then I knew we were in trouble. We were at about a 4 foot drop and we were going into it back of the boat first. The first part to hit the water was the guide and I, so the rest of the boat flipped over the top of us, along with all of the people. This one terrified me. I was under water and all above me were bodies. I opened my eyes under water and was kicking and pushing, trying to get the top. Finally, I saw blue...the
Nick
Nick hanging out raft. I couldn't get out from it so I came up in the raft and took a breath. Meanwhile, I'm getting thrown over and around rocks and I can't see anyone and I'm freaking out. I tried to go under and then scraped my hip over a rock and I knew it'd leave a mark. I got out from under the boat and at this point decided I'd had enough. I half cried while trying to grab onto the boat and keep my legs up so they didn't get stuck on anything under water. Jake came from the other side of the boat and him and I swam to the other side of the river this time. We met up with the Canadian women and she asked us how we were and then we saw some of our people in a different boat, that had stopped to pick them up, and the rest of them were down stream. The river was calm again so we had to get in and swim down to everyone and then they pulled us back in the boat. The rest of the day, we didn't flip. No other boat in our group flipped. I've been
Ready to go
Now that I see it, I should have had a different helmet rafting before...and never flipped.
I had no idea that it would be that scary flipping in a boat...but when I think about the rocks, and the current and that many people, I really can't believe that no one was seriously injured. I'm not sure I've been in a situation where I had no idea what I was doing and it was totally up to my adrenaline to make the next move. Telling the story it sounds like I actually thought about things and decided what to do but it was so fast I think my body just did what it had to. The first fall I was terrified for other people. I saw heads under the boat, and I saw a head hit the rock and I was just scared for everyone. The second fall I didn't even think about people, I was just trying to get air and not smash into rocks. I've been trying for two days now to think of a time that I have been more scared then in those two instances but I haven't come up with anything yet. I've had a bad crash snowboarding, and been separated from everyone I was with on
the mountain for quite some time when I was pretty young, and I blacked out for a second once after a bad crash inter tubing on the lake, but I can't think of a time where I was actually thinking holy crap are we gonna die?! Towards the end of the trip we were thinking, "was it really that bad? are we making it worse than it was?" My conclusion is this: If bad is knocked unconscious, broken limbs, and emergency room then no, it wasn't. But if bad is frightening and scary and just enough to make you appreciate being alive then yes, it was.
Besides the unwanted excitement of the trip, Inje was absolutely beautiful. The whole time I was rafting I was just in awe of the mountains and color. It might be one of the prettiest places I've been! The sun was shining through the clouds and onto the trees which were every single shade of green. We were wrapped in mountains and floating down a beautiful river. It really was a great weekend. I'm glad we're all alive 😊
I wish I could have taken good pictures this weekend but most of the
activities did not allow for a camera in hand!
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Jeanne Curtis
non-member comment
Man, Bet, this is scary stuff! Thanks for letting us in on the details. I had heard that it was rough but this really gave me a feel for what it was like. I'm so thankful everyone is OK. Let's not do that when I come!! Have a good week and be safe! Give Jake a hug for me! Love you! Jeanne