Jeju Island
It is Korea's tallest mountain, at 1,950m, and is actually a volcano. Many of the island's typical souveniers and popular tourist spots have to do with the abundance of volcanic rock.
We spent 5 days and 4 nights on the island. The first two of which we spent at the large southern city of Seogwipo (서귀포). This area is famous for the bay, the longest walking bridge in Korea, 3 beautiful waterfalls, and a huge botanical garden.
We started our first day by hiking aimlessly around in search for a way to reach the waterfall and ended up discovering some great views. The first waterfall we saw was Cheonjiyeon Falls (천지연 폭포).
The following day, we continued our walk around the city of Seogwipo in search of the 2nd waterfall which is locaed on the cliff covered coast. After walking along the coast for a ways, we found the trail that led to the waterfall.
This waterfall is called Jeongbang Falls (정방 폭포). It was VERY misty here from the combination of the cascade and the wind from the coast, so after just a few moments of standing in front of the falls in an attempt to get a good picture, our backs were soaked.
After finding some lunch and taking a short rest, we grabbed out bags from the hostel and headed west to the next closest town. This town is home to a big resort complex for all the rich folk centered around the main attractions of the area: another waterfall, a famous bridge, and the botanical gardens.
The large indoor greenhouse was full of exhibitions of different classifications of plants and surrounding the outside were many other sections of gardens: water plants, the French Garden, the Italian Garden, and so forth.
The 3rd and final waterfall of the area is called Cheonjeyeon Falls (천제연 폭포). It is made up of 3 cascades; the first of which doesn't flow unless there is heavy rain but is home to a beautiful pond nonetheless.
The second cascade is the largest of three, but we didn't see the thrid one. Between the 2nd and 3rd is a large, beautiful walking bridge (pictured below) that we crossed back over into the gardens.
The third night we spent in Jeju City, which was closer to the last few attractions we had wanted to see. On our third and final full day in Jeju, we started at Manjanggul Lava Tube. This is a cave created by the lava from the volcano a long time ago. Visitors are able to walk inside it for about a mile to see the lava column.
Below is the lava column, located about a 15-20 minute walk from the entrance throught the dimly lit and cool cave. As it had rained the night before,our feet ended up getting soaked from trekking across the extra damp and puddle covered floor.
Located a mile or so down the road from the entrance to the lava tube is Gimnyeong Maze Park. It is a beautiful hedge maze designed by Adrian Fisher and the park is owned and maintained by Frederic H. Dustin. The area is also home to dozens of cats owned and cared for by the park.
It was a very fun little side adventure to our day. We thought we would solve the maze easily and quickly, but ended up spending at least 20 minutes or so lost and wandering inside.
At the end of our last day in Jeju, we went to one of the islands most famous attractions: Loveland. This is a sex museum and outdoor sculpture park that was opened in 2004. As definied by wikipedia, "The park is focused on a theme of sex, running sex education films, and featuring 140 sculptures representing humans in various sexual positions."
As much of the content of the park is very much R-rated, I will not be including any of the pictures we took there on my blog. However, if you simply google "Loveland Jeju", you can get a very good idea of the funny and clever things they have there. The pictures above and below and the front gate and sign of the museum. Perhaps this can give you an idea of just how blatent this place was.
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