Haeparang-gil Coastal Trail

Cam and I discovered a beautiful hiking trail right beside the ocean. We didn't do much research before going beyond looking at the map https://www.alltrails.com/trail/south-korea/busan/1 - seeing there was a trail along the water, and figuring out how to take transit there. We were blown away by how beautiful it was! Definitely a hike we'll do again. It took us 20 minutes on the subway and 20 minutes on a bus to get there.

We started at Oryukdo skywalk and got a view of the trail. The trail starts paved and there are a number of staircases, but then less than a kilometre in, you're walking on dirt paths (with intermittent stairs) and surrounded by trees. All you can hear are waves and heat bugs chirping! I was not expecting to find a place in the city where you can't hear the cars.

In the distance you can see Haeundae beach which is 17 km away

We didn't do the full 17 km coastal walk because that sounded like a bit much so we just did 8 km from Oryukdo to Gwangalli beach, thinking we might go for a swim. Although we heard that people wear bikinis here, there was only maybe one person on the whole beach who wasn't wearing a swim guard and swim shorts and it was really wavy so we decided not to swim. Maybe we'll buy some swim shirts and go swimming next time though. We definitely want to go paddle boarding some time too.

Here are some photos of the hike!

Photo on Oryukdo skywalk taken by a kind stranger

The hiking trail has these first aid kits every kilometre or so