Cable Car to Amnam Park in Busan, South Korea

I really don't care so much about cable car rides anymore, but it did provide easy access to the park on the hill across from my hotel. It's also one of the most visited tourist areas in the city, which i normally avoid. But that was outweighed by my desire to see the Amnam Park.

There are two options for cable cars. One has a glass bottom and one does not. I really didn't care about the glass bottom, but I figured if I spent the extra 5,000 KWN (about $3.50 USD), the line would be shorter. Wrong. They were about the same with a wait of about 10 - 15 minutes to board. The cost for the ride was 22,000 KWN ($16.50 USD) for the glass bottom ride.

The ride to the park over the bay:

After disembarking it is a short walk through a kid's park. There are replicas of dinosaurs and such throughout here. Great place for small kids:

One of the cool things about South Korea, from my experience, is they do not charge admission to their parks. Free of charge to locals and tourists alike. Personally, I have no issue paying admission as a tourist, but I like it is available for free to their residents. I think everyone should have access to their national treasures without the burden of charge. To some, even a small price can be cost prohibitive if you have a large family, and this was certainly a family oriented place. There was a charge for the cable car, but that could be avoided by driving, bicycling, or walking to the park.

After the kid's park it was an uphill ascent through the forested path:

There was this walkway diversion from the main path that led to an elevated area for better photo ops:

Panoramic shot from near the top of this walkway:

The walkway looks curved because I took the shot In panoramic view mode.

After reaching this summit, it was back down the same walkway to the main path that circumnavigated the park. I photographed some local birds in the trees:

I think these birds are the Oriental Magpie.

I met a man from New Zealand in Jeju the week before I was here. He was not a fan of the magpies as they are ubiquitous in his country (by his account). He mentioned that they will, on occasion, attack humans. I think he was also frustrated by their noise. I clearly recall his sentiment summed up in the line, "The only teaching tool for the magpie is a bullet". Now there's a New Zealander with some strong feelings! By the way, I don't share them, maybe because these didn't attack me.

I continued on my walk through the trees with only small opportunities to see the water through the canopy.

At the end of the park walk it was back through the kid's park. I then descended down some steep stairs to view the suspension bridge. There was a small charge for this but I skipped it. Just looked like a tourist trap to me with no real value.

While here I saw a small poodle tethered to a handrail. The tether was wrapped around the rail to the point the dog could not move and it was tight against his neck. He kept trying to stand on the bottom rail to relieve the strain.

I saw several Koreans just standing around looking but doing nothing. I didn't know if one were the owners or not but I didn't care at the moment. I undid the tether and re-tied it to give the poor dog relief. I waited around 5 minutes to see who the owner was until they showed up and untied the dog like nothing was wrong.

I really hate to see animals abused. I have an interesting story about the same thing that I interacted with in Vietnam (a bit scarier), but that's another story. The Vietnamese still ate dogs when I was there. I have a really sick story about that but probably shouldn't share it with the masses. I really don't think my 5 readers can handle it!

I then went back to the cable car for my return voyage:

I shared a cable car with others as it held up to 8.

That concluded my afternoon in the park. The entire adventure lasted about 2 1/2 hours. Plenty for me when much of it was uphill walking.