Day 115: The Irish Hawaii Of The Orient

Today was the beginning of a great three day odyssey!

Andrea and I woke up bright and early and cabbed on over to Gimpo Airport to catch our flight to Jeju Island. Gimpo was Seoul's old international airport, but since the new one opened up in Incheon a few years ago, Gimpo has been rendered to handling domestic flights only. Even though it was only 8:30am in the morning when we arrived at the airport and we had had hardly any sleep, Andrea and I were as giddy as a couple of schoolgirls looped up on a bucket of sugar candy! We were totally excited to not only go to Jeju, but just the fact that this was a TRIP that involved FLYING somewhere made us climb the walls with excitement and anticipation!

Our flight to Jeju International Airport on KoreanAir was such a deal for us - only about $170 CDN return! Since the flight is just under an hour I was expecting to board a small jetliner or maybe even just a prop plane to Jeju - boy was I wrong! We were ushered onto a gorgeous AirBus A330 - the same size jumbo jet as the one that carried me from Vancouver across the Pacific! The plane was totally full too - WOW - *everyone* wants to fly to Jeju! The flight was smooth and comfortable and so short - we were up in the air and then landing at Jeju in no time at all it seemed.

Our plan upon arrival was to try and see if we could rent a car to travel around the island. However, we were soon shot down in cold blood by the totalitarian Hertz ladies who wouldn't rent us a car without an international driver's license. We sorta saw this coming, but we thought we'd give it a shot anyways! ;-) We sat down and worked out a basic itinerary about what we wanted to see and do on Jeju, and decided to get out of the capital Jeju City right away to go and explore the eastern side of the island. We caught a bus and cruised towards the town of Seongsan.

Jeju Island is an incredibly beautiful island, and definitely the most scenic part of Korea that I've seen yet! It doesn't feel like you're in Korea at all - it's only an hour away but we felt so removed from the rest of the country. Not only is Jeju's culture different because it's so far off-shore from the mainland and therefore developed in a relatively isolated manner from the rest of the country for centuries, but in a physical sense the landscape is very different. The best way I can describe Jeju is 'Ireland meets Hawaii.' It has lush green rolling fields and pastures with stone walls dividing the properties and dramatic cliff shorelines (like Ireland) but it also has volcanoes and palm trees and tropical vegetation not found anywhere in the world this far north (like Hawaii.) SO BEAUTIFUL!!!

We got a cheap hotel room in the seaside town of Seongsan (less than $30 CDN) and made a b-line for our first island destination - Manjanggul. Manjanggul is an enormous undergound lava tube - at just over 13 km. in length its the longest known lava tube in the world. The tube is absolutely enormous - large enough that you can drive a transport truck through most of it! Only about 1 km. of it is open to the public to walk through and it was an amazing experience. The lava tube is just underneath the surface but is dark and wet and feels like you're DEEP underground. It's a blast to walk through it and check out all the hardened magma that once ran through the tube when the island's volcano last erupted about 25,000 years ago. The walls are perfectly round, jet black, and still look like they're wet and gooey. Half way up the wall of the tube are 'racing stripes' that the flowing magma carved into the rock while flowing through the tube. For geography/volcano buffs like me, this was the coolest place ever!
There was even a giant chunk of lava that looks like a turtle, and at the end of the walk is a hardened pillar of lava that once flowed from the upper chamber of the tube down into the main lava pipe - a frozen magma waterfall! So cool!

After the lava tube we walked down the road to a hedge maze that some British guy built on the island a long time ago. The maze is in the shape of the island and Andrea and I had a fun time running through the maze trying to find our way out. We were in one of our silly moods again so we filmed a couple hilarious videos of us pretending to be in a music video - turning and spinning through the maze while gesturing to the camera - think Loreena McKennitt meets Madonna's 'Nothing Really Matters'. Too much fun!

After the maze we headed back to Seongsan to chill out and relax. The weather today was really cloudy and grey with misty clouds rolling by - it was actually really beautiful and gave the whole island a very 'midevil' feel to it. We still had the energy to do more so we decided to tackle Ilchulbong, or more commonly known as Sunset Peak. Sunset Peak is a MASSIVE volcanic crater rising up right next to the town, and its steep jagged cliffs plunge directly into the cold grey sea. Halla Mountain is the principal volcano which formed Jeju and is centred right in the middle of the island, but throughout Jeju over 360 smaller parasitic volcanic cones are found. Sunset Peak is one of these many smaller volcanoes that once fed off of Halla Mountain, and definitely the most beautiful of them all. A trail leads up to the crater's edge, and we were eager to climb to the top.

It took about 45 minutes or so to climb up to the top of Sunset Peak, and the views while climbing rewarded us with breathtaking sights of the town below, the waves crashing into the shore far down below, and a sweeping vista of the whole eastern half of the island - I could see at least another seven volcanoes dotting the landscape! WOW! When we finally got to the top we both just stopped and stared at the magnificent sight that lay before us - an absolutely massive volcanic crater completely filled with the greenest, lushest grassy alpine meadow that you can imagine. The crater is shaped like a giant punch bowl and its rim is guarded by jagged rocks which stare down at the five or six lonely trees that grow in the crater. The whole top of the volcano has a very 'Jurassic Park' feel to it, like as if you sat still enough you could see a pod of Brontosaurus' trek through the crater or that a Pteradactyl would swoop down from above. Amazing! It was definitely a view I'll never forget as long as I live.

After our hike up Sunset Peak we ventured down to the small beach that is wedged beneath the volcano's peak, just under the cliffs of the island. The beach is made up entirely of pure black volcanic sand and giant chunks of rogue lava pieces the size of Volkswagens lie scattered in the sand along the far end of the beach. And all through the cliffs dozens, if not hundreds, of caves beckon into the dark stone - like blackened swiss cheese that could be the gateway to hell - very menacing looking! These caves are apparently home to hundreds of thousands of bats. Andrea and I were hoping to see some bats but we had no luck there. We even ran around the beach screeching in the highest frequencies we could create with our human voice boxes in an attempt to draw our nocturnal flying mammal friends out of their cliff-side condiminiums, but it was to no avail.

We returned to town to have some very greasy fried chicken for dinner, and then went back to the motel room to gorge ourselves on cookies and watch TV. We were pretty exhausted from our long day so we went to bed fairly early. What an amazing, incredible day!!!