Sapsi Island

A Few Days Away

Excerpts from my Notebook

Anne had quit her job which coincided with the last two days of my vacation week and so we had a rare mutual four days off. We planned to visit the small island of Sapsi. We to the bus to Daecheon beach and spent the night in a motel there before catching the ferry at noon the next day.

The Sapsi Island ferry just prior to departure.

I can conclusively say that I've never traveled on a calmer sea. There was no wind and the water was completely flat. It took only forty minutes to get to the island.

Anne enjoys a grilled dried squid on the ferry.

　We were met at the port by a woman who successfully tried to interest us in her beach huts. She drove us across the island and we got a small orientation from her where we learned four interesting and important facts. Sapsi island is home to 150 families. There is an elementary school with 23 students, but older children have to go to school on the mainland. That night there would be a show by a company who wanted to sell something. Finally we learned that there was no cash machine on the island. After paying for our accommodation and factoring in the cost of the ferry back to the mainland, we only had 40,000 won to live on.

Our beach, with its flotsam strewn high-tide line.

　It took less than five minutes to get across the island and we got our first sight of the beach that would be home to us for the next two days. We dropped of our bags and then were taken to the local supermarket where, due to our restricted budget, we bought only what we thought we couldn't live without - namely noodles to eat and beer to drink.

The walk up from the beach to our beach hut and the four empty ones beside it.

　Back at the beach the tide was out and the sand was covered in beautiful patterns of sand. These patterns had been created by small crabs as they dug little holes on the beach. We went for a swim then ate some noodles. Anne decided that we should dig for shellfish, something she had done as a child, so we borrowed two little trowels and set to on the beach. After an hour or two, we had a bucket full of shellfish.

A small crab arranges balls of sand just so as he tunnels into the beach.

　We went back to the beach hut and had a cold shower (there was no hot water) and then contacted the woman to get a lift to the show. We were taken to the village hall, directly behind the island's hospital. Inside there was a large crowd of islanders sitting on the floor. It took me a while to realise that they were segregated with about sixteen men sitting on the left and a little under a hundred women sitting on the right. The play was in full swing and involved a bad husband who tried to poison his wife. I didn't really understand it, but it was dialogue driven and completely overacted. The women in the crowd seemed to enjoy it though, breaking into applause every now and again.

The islanders watch a dramatic production put on by salespeople.

　During a long intermission the players started doing a TV shopping style pressure sale of vitamin tablets. According to Anne the claims they were making were preposterous; the vitamins were a miracle cure. After taking them for one week all stomach problems, headaches and sickness would be gone. After the intermission and the play ended everyone was given a free bottle of liquid soap! We walked back to our hut with an old lady who lived close by. We adopted her as our grandmother because when she heard that we didn't have much food she gave us some rice, seaweed, eggs and kimchi. We ate some rice before we went to bed.

Early the next morning we were kept awake by torrential rain beating on the aluminium walls and roof of the beach hut. The rain eventually stopped and we went for a walk on the beach. The tide was out and the rocks were showing. Anne was delighted to find a lot of oysters, and spent a lot of time eating them raw on the beach. She even persuaded me to try one, but she couldn't get me to eat another one.

Black clams, oysters and seaweed cover the rocks at low tide.

Anne cooked the shellfish that we had gathered the day before into a soup and we breakfasted on shellfish soup, rice and seaweed. Then we went for another swim in the sea, took a shower and headed out for a walk around the island, looking for chocolate chip cookies.

The fertile fields of Sapsi island.

The day was a little misty but it was nice to walk around the island. The whole place was very green, but what struck me the most was the quietness. It was rare that we heard a noise in our walk. People were going about their business, but very slowly. We came to a store, but it was locked. The woman who ran it was digging in her garden and trotted over to sell us cookies.

The island's flock of Ostriches.

　The two highlights of our walk were the three ostriches that someone had in their backyard and the elementary school. The elementary school was the only place where we saw more than two people. There were a group of young men playing soccer in the playground and a gaggle of kids jumping on a really big trampoline. They asked me if I was from Russia.

Children of all ages enjoy a trampoline in the playground of Sapsi elementary school.

　Back on the beach we started digging for shellfish again, but I got bored after 45 minutes. The tide was out so I walked out along a reef of rocks that jutted out into the sea. The rocks were covered in black clams and I collected a handful for our soup. Anne crucially made friends with a minister and his wife. More on that later. She learned from them that there had been no ferry that day.

Life on the beach: A hermit crab struggles to pull his house along with him, a seagull glides behind a boat, a crab sits camouflaged on the sand, a starfish crawls along the beach, a crab builds a castle, breathing tubes protrude, a fish lies doggo in the water near a frondy thing that I wouldn't want to tread on.

　By this time it was getting dark so we headed up to the beach hut and cooked noodles again. Then we sat outside and built a fire and sat chatting by firelight until it was time for bed. It was wonderful.

They're all going somewhere. A multitude of crabs head down the beach.

　The next morning was quiet and misty. We got up early and packed, then found out that the first ferry had been cancelled. We went for a walk on the beach instead of going home early. I took a lot of pictures of the animals, the most notable of which was the mass of crabs moving along the sand as a group. After our little walk we headed back and cooked shellfish soup again.

Eggs in a crab in a clam in a soup. The soup, clam, crab and eggs were all found to be delicious by Anne.

The day was a little foggy, and because of this the second ferry was also cancelled. We headed down to the port to see what was happening. The sea was calm and visibility was at about 100 meters, which didn't seem like a good reason to cancel a fourteen kilometer ferry trip in the age of radar and GPS. Anne talked to some people, and she told me that we needed to get off the island otherwise we'd be stuck there for five more days: A storm was headed this way.

Boats in the fog. Visibility at about 100 meters.

　At the port we were fortunate enough to meet the minister from the day before. Being Saturday, he was anxious to get back to his church before the Sunday service, so he's paid a fisherman to take him to the mainland on his boat. He got a very good price because the fisherman was leaned on by the island's minister. It still seemed pretty expensive to me though. They waited for our bags to be brought down from our hut and we joined them.

The ferry being cancelled, we rode across the water in this small fishing boat.

　The ride across the water was fun. The boat went a lot faster than the ferry did and it only took ten minutes. After arriving the minister drove us to an ATM where we paid for half of the boat trip, then he drove us to the bus stop. The bus back to Daejeon left one minute after we arrived at the bus terminal, so there was no hanging around. We were back in Daejeon two and a half hours later. We were exhausted but relaxed.

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