We took the ferry over to his home island and dropped our stuff off at a pension (a guest house). Bret showed us around the island: taking us to his parents’ house and farm, helping us catch bitty fiddler crabs in the pluff mud around his home (apparently they eat them), and taking us foraging for ginseng roots in the mountain near his house. We were pretty terrible at foraging. I tried to get some bulbs, but I kept hacking off the roots on accident. Oops.
Seagulls on the ferry ride over.
Catching crabs!
PUPPIES!!
I managed to hack off the root. :(
A huge swarm of black ants we saw on a tree trunk!
The day was really relaxing and filled with wonderful food! We ate fresh clams and grilled a lot of amazing beef for dinner!
Some of the island's natural beauty:
On Sunday we got to go out on the boat. We went in the later morning, when the tide was getting to its lowest point. Apparently the currents were too harsh this weekend, so we couldn’t go out to sea to fish. We went digging for clams instead. Bret gave all of us little shovels and we wallowed out into the mud and started digging around for the clams. We worked for about 3 hours until the tide came back in.
The speed with which the water came in and out was pretty astounding. Within an hour and fifteen minutes, the tide dropped six feet!! The mud flat where we dug up all the clams was completely under the water when we approached it. Our boat came to rest in the mud for the three hours we went digging. Then the water came back up again and we were off!
Coming...
Coming...
It's here!
Our bounty from the sea. We ate a lot of clams afterward.
Overall, it was a relaxed and amazingly cultural weekend. What a great opportunity. According to Bret, we were the first foreigners who ever went digging for clams on this mud flat!
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