Again...I gotta thank Katie for doing the work on this one...awesome job!
Jeju Island, one of the seven natural wonders of the world, has been called “The Hawaii of Korea”. While it’s not quite like Hawaii, it’s still beautiful.
Jenn and I set off for Jeju early Saturday afternoon. The typical travelling breakfast (blueberry muffin and coffee) was consumed and we were checked in.
While looking at the smart uniforms of all the employees from other airlines we were wondering if we should feel a bit worried that the people working on our flight were dressed in jeans, t-shirts, and trainers. Nevertheless, Jenn was flying on Jin air, so all was well with the world.
After a quick 50 minute flight, we arrived in beautiful Jeju.
We wandered over to the tourist desk, picked up a map, and got brief directions how to get to our hotel by bus or taxi. Figuring that it might be a bit difficult to just hop into a bus we decided to play it safe and get in a cab. We got in a cab and told the cab driver the landmark just like we were instructed to do.This didn’t go as planned. Our cab driver didn’t speak any English. We handed him the map we were given (which was in English). We looked at him staring blankly at it only to discover that he was holding the map upside down, letting us know that not only can he not speak a word of English, but he clearly didn’t even know what the English alphabet looked like. Jenn took over with the map, and this also didn’t do anything for us.
We got out of the cab and decided to try our luck with a new cab driver. Our cab driver was determined to get us to our destination. We stood around looking like tourists. All that was missing was the over sized Hawaiian shirts that so many American tourists think are necessary to wear when they travel (no offense to those of you who do this). So after three other cab drivers come over to help our poor old friend (yes, at this point he’d been promoted to friend) he had it figured out. He called us back over and we got in the cab again. And he started driving. All was well in Jeju. Or so we thought. After he takes off he turns to us and starts speaking Korean, because apparently we do. After going back and forth we learned that he wanted the phone number to our hotel. We frantically start googling anything and everything and finally pull up the number. He does a lot of nodding and such and finally drops us off at what we presumed was our hotel. We get out, bow, pay the driver and wave goodbye. We had a photo of our hotel on the phone and couldn’t see a building the resembled it anywhere. Yes, our cab driver had dropped us off in the middle of no where.
We had two options, left or right. We went left and saw a young girl washing the windows. In my mind i’m thinking, okay, this girl is probably in college which means she has had 8+years of English so she can probably help us. We say the name of the hotel and ask ‘where’ in Korean. She shrugged her shoulders and said no. With our tails between our legs we turn around to try and find someone else to ask. Then, it was as though the angels were singing and a bright light shone from heaven, lighting the way for us wayward souls, we found our hotel. It was as simple as turning around. How the girl who worked less than one block from the hotel didn’t know where it was is still a mystery to me. Maybe that’s why she was cleaning windows…We were just glad to find our hotel.
We looked at our map and saw several beaches that were somewhat close by, one stood out in particular, so we did some quick research to figure out what bus to take to get there and if it was even worth going to. While doing research we discovered that the black sand on black sand beach may just help with obesity. We looked no further, this was what we would do for the rest of the afternoon.
After getting a bit lost again, we finally made it to the beach, just shortly before sunset.
While waiting for the sun to set, we thought, why not bury our feet in the obesity ridding sand.
And me, being a fatty, thought, this gives me even more reason to eat pringles. I’ll just lose the weight from them while sitting on the black sand.
So that’s exactly what I did.
As the sun was setting, I got the brilliant idea to get a ‘beach jumping shot’. Between Jenn’s photography skills and my inability to jump when she said to it ended up being not just one shot but about forty. Everyone around us was highly entertained.
You could tell by the look on my face that i was bound and determined to make that my last photo!
We watched a beautiful sunset and then headed of to dinner to meet up with some friends from Incheon that happened to be in the same area.
Sunday morning came all too soon and we woke up early as we already had a full day planned. But before one can do anything else…they must eat breakfast…so we consumed what would become our breakfast every morning while in Jeju. Coffee and a pretzel. But because we are ‘watching our calories’ we shared a pretzel. Healthy yeah?
After our healthy breakfast we set off for a day of touristy stuff. We started at the world’s largest lava caves, one of the things that made Jeju one of the seven wonders of the world. We headed to the bus terminal and bought a ticket and stood on the bus platform looking a little confused…as a matter of fact…we looked something like this:
We somehow get on our bus and the driver takes our tickets. We asked “Majanggul caves?” and he refused to respond…which left us having no idea if we were actually going to make it to the caves or not.
Thankfully our bus driver wasn’t as mean as we thought he was as at some point during the ride he grunts something about the caves and stares at us in his rear view mirror…we took that as a sign that it was our stop. We get off the bus very timidly and look around…there is nothing in sight.
But then again, another light from heaven shone down and illuminated the giant billboard that was direction in front of us. Yes, the caves were 2km away and there happened to be a cab just waiting for some lost tourist to hop in and pay an absurd amount for the distance we were going. We were just relieved to not be in the middle of nowhere.
We arrive at the caves and went in to do what tourists do. It was pretty interesting at first…and then it becomes routine so we do what we do best…make it interesting for ourselves.
After the caves we ventured back onto the bus not really knowing if it would take us where we wanted to go, but after another hour long ride we arrived at our next destination: Sunrise peak. At noon.
We made it to the top and enjoyed a beautiful view.
I can only imagine what it looked like at sunrise. But imagining is all I’ll be doing as I am never up to see the sunrise let alone on my vacation. While it wasn’t exactly a long hike up to the top, it was steep; thirty minutes of nothing but stairs in the heat and humidity.
After Sunrise peak, we headed over to Udo Island. Amazing! It was about a fifteen minute ferry ride over to the beautiful island, and what better way to see the island than to hop onto an AV and cruise around the island on your own. Now, here’s the thing, a Korean man takes your ID, doesn’t check to see if you have a license, and gives you instructions in Korean with the key words in English, start, no, brake, go, reverse no….and off you go.
After finishing Udo Island and a quick dinner and massage we were more than ready to get some sleep and prepare for our next day’s adventures which proved to be worse than we ever could have anticipated.
We woke up early Monday morning with a full day again. We were going to hike Hallasan mountain, Korea’s highest mountain, then go visit the southern part of Jeju where there are meant to be some beautiful waterfalls and then head back for a nice dinner. That’s not quite what happened.
We left for our hike at 7am, expecting it to take about 5.5 hours which is how long it took our friends, who must be in INCREDIBLE shape as that’s not nearly the time it took us.
We got to Hallasan ready to go. We were excited to do something that many people don’t even attempt to do.
Those smiles on our faces didn’t last long. We set off and had an idea of what the trail looked like:
Not too bad right? Well, not too bad if you were wearing proper shoes and had ample food. We made it through the end of the red zone, aka the rough terrain, and still felt great. And then…the green zone
would not end. We felt miserable; stopping every few steps to take a break. As we were hiking in the green zone we were literally hiking through the clouds and ended up above the clouds, that shows you just how high we were. Korean people would walk by and say “Fighting! Almost there”…yeah yeah yeah…i get it. I would smile and say ‘haha thanks’ all the while deep down inside i wanted to push them off the mountain to get them from looking so happy. After 4 hours we made it to the top of the blessed mountain. I had never wanted to die so bad. I sat down and said “God, you’re gonna have to help me cuz i literally can’t move. I don’t know how i’m getting down the mountain.” And, to top it all off, it was too cloudy at the top. if there was view worth seeing, we didn’t see it. We hiked to the top to see only clouds.
Funny things can motivate you to move when you don’t think you can move at all. When I had no strength, I somehow found it when the other 60 people on the top of the mountain began shouting and running to the edge of the mountain. When people are screaming in a language you don’t understand and running all you can do is get up and run with them. Three things were going through my mind as this happened.
1. North Korea has attacked.
2. A bear is coming.
3. I’m going to die. I’ve hiked this stupid mountain and this is how my life ends.
Well, I run to the edge of the mountain with them. Why I would run to the danger i still haven’t figured out yet. But I did. Only to see the Koreans staring at CLOUDS! Breathing them in. Apparently they didn’t realize that WE HAD BEEN HIKING IN THEM FOR HOURS!!!! I wanted to shove them all off the other side of the mountain. Keep in mind, Jenn and I had only had half a pretzel, two fiber one bars, half a gatorade, and 1 small bottle of water at this point. I was beyond done. They say a picture says a thousand words…here’s how Jenn looked at the top of the mountain:
Exhausted, no? So after that, we didn’t really want to stay up there much longer so we began the trek back down. And the unimaginable happened. My strength was renewed. I was nearly running down the mountain, singing about the hills being alive. I was a brand new person.
For two hours. Then the energy was gone and the misery returned. It could have been the fact that the whole hike was made up of these miserable little rocks that pierced your foot with each step you took. It could have been the lack of food. It could have been that there were moths every where. It could have been that there were still Koreans full of energy running behind us causing us to pull over every few seconds. I don’t know what it was, but it was.
We made it back to the bottom and wanted to purchase a medal. Yes, the mountain is medal-worthy. We go into the shop and i sit down in the only available seat. Collapse may be a better word.
As humiliating as this photo is, it truly expresses how i felt. Sun burnt through the clouds, dehydrated, and without food, i just wanted my medal. And then the lady asked the most ridiculous question: Do you have a picture to prove you made it to the top.” I just looked at her like she was insane. Apparently my drool and sweat covering her counter didn’t prove it enough. Thankfully, we had a photo.
So, after purchasing our medals, we struggled over to the bus stop to go home. All other plans for the day were cancelled. We didn’t want to do anything ever again. After a quick shower though that changed. We met up with some other friends who happened to be in Jeju as well and had a nice fattening meal of pizza for dinner.
We were so relieved that we were leaving Jeju the following day. All we would have been able to do is lay in bed. It’s times like that just I can’t help but ask myself “What were you thinking?!?”
