Seriously, Who Knew Korea Was this Cool?

So, on with the tales from my recent trip to Jeju "Special, Self-Governing Province" Island. And this time, just to shake things up, I shall depart from my general trend of reverse chronology.

Jeff and I left Seoul very early Thursday morning (April 26th). Everything in the airport went incredibly smoothly (sadly, model rocket engines are not allowed on domestic Korean flights as we had feared, but no one treated us like criminals for trying to bring a couple) and the hour-long flight to the Island was a breeze. Upon arrival, we set about making our way to Seongsan Ilchulbong, or fortress mountain, sunrise peak. We wanted to stay in they area so that we could catch what was fabled to be an amazing sunrise from the top of this cute, little mountain on the Island's eastern shore. We didn't have hotel reservations, because we had gathered that these things could be taken care of once we arrived. Sure enough, when we hit the little village we were greeted by a pair of ajumas (grandma-style ladies) who showed us a couple of rooms. We were able to get things taken care of using my very limited Korean and our Inn-Keeper's total lack of English, apart from the word "bed". Score.

Here is a view of Seongsan Ilchulbong from the hotel, pretty nice, eh? After some settling in and napping (me) and exploring (Jeff), we headed on a walk together. We looked over the souvenir shops (all of them selling all of the same things), and then decided to take a look around the town.


To my great surprise, we ran into a group of Haenyeo, the female divers for whom Jeju is famous. There used to be hundreds and hundreds of them, but these days there are apparently very few (like, 25-40 maybe), so this was quite a treat. It seems we had caught them on their way home. We walked in the direction from whence the lady divers had come and came upon what appeared to be their headquarters, where this picture was taken. We got to see them weighing their seaweed and checking out the other ocean-goodies they had collected.

Feeling inspired by the Haenyeo, we decided to check out the water ourselves. It was very cold, but we had fun wading around. There were volcanic rocks everywhere (duh, volcano).


The next morning, we got up very early to be sure that we could make it up the mountain to catch the sunrise. They actually ring a gong to wake up people, but I didn't know about this, so we beat the gong by a few minutes. We were pretty much the first people to make it to the top. Above is what the village below looked like as day began to break.

This is what the top of the trail looked like. Sadly, the sunrise eluded us, as the weather was too foggy/cloudy. Still, Jeff took some great pictures and we enjoyed getting to see the large volcanic crater at the top. Also, there was a little ajuma who came puffing up the trail with a large pack. She then set to work getting out coffee and juice and such things to sell. We watched her climb over the fence which divided sunrise-viewing-area from wilderness to retrieve yet more goods from her secret hiding place: a large patch of tall grass.

After we headed back down, I took some time to pose with my new friend, Mr. Haribong. Haribong are statues made of volcanic rock, like the one above.

The following day we packed up our things and headed for Jeju Hiking Inn, a hostel in Seogwipo City, which is on the southern edge of Jeju. We chose this location for its proximity to Hallasan, the largest mountain in South Korea, which we planned to climb the following day. We were planning to take a bus, and met a very cute, friendly ajuma at the bus stop, who grabbed the skin on my arm and said a bunch of stuff to me that I didn't understand, and then laughed a lot. She then apparently decided that she would have better luck communicating with us by tracing things in Hangul with her finger on Jeff's arm. In the end, we were able to establish that all three of us were headed for Seogwipo. Jeff and I ended up negotiating a reasonable fare with a taxi driver, and we took the ajuma with us.

After arriving in Seogwipo, checking in and resting a bit, we headed out for a tasty meal of Korean barbecued pork, known as galbi (Jeff) and bi bim bap (crazy veggies with rice and egg in a hot stone pot-- me) and then checked out Cheonjeyeon waterfall, which you see above. Pretty, no? The proprietor of our hostel was very helpful and generous with information and directions.

The next morning we headed out to the foot of the Seongpanak trail on Mt. Halla to begin our big climb. As you can see, the trail was very rough in places. Luckily, we are very tough. I was really feeling the itch to move fast (the trail to the summit closes at 12:30pm, the trail down closes at 2:00pm, and in pursuits such as mountain-climbing, it can be difficult not to go as fast as one can and still stay motivated). Lucky for me, Jeff gave me his blessing to go on ahead. I continued scrambling up the rocks as best I could. My goal was to make it to the summit by 1:30pm (we started the summit part of the trail at 12:25pm)...

and I'll be damned if I didn't reach the top at 1:27pm.

It was beautiful.

Jeff made it to the top a bit after I did, and promptly announced that he would never climb another mountain ever ever again. We had a little time to marvel at the mountaintop's crater lake but unfortunately we had to head back down at 2:00pm. We decided to take the Gwaneumsa trail back down since, at 8.7 KM, it was a bit shorter than Seongpanak's 9.6 KM and plus, it was a trail we hadn't yet seen. It turned out that the trail was much harder than the first (much steeper, and lots of ups and downs), and thus the climb down ended up being harder than the way up.


After a while, I was still feeling strong.

Jeff, on the other hand, needed a breather.

Eventually we made it down the mountain, all the way to where this picture was taken. Much sweating and cursing were involved. I had a great time, despite the rough spots (including a little spill that I took, which thankfully resulted in nothing more serious than a few scratches). Jeff thinks that maybe this was the hardest thing he's ever done. We went back to our hotel and chilled the heck out.


Sunday morning, it was already time to go, so we headed to the airport and hopped on our plane. Here is what the Island looked like from the plane.

And then there we were, descending back into Seoul.

It was a lovely mini-vacation. The Island was warm and laid back, and the people were very nice. In some ways it reminded me a little of Mexico. In conclusion, volcanoes are cool.