Ever since we got here, we've been told all about this beautiful island called Jeju that Korea is so proud of. So last spring, we decided to go check it out. We'd been told it was a small island, so we could see everything in a few days. We felt up to the challenge.
Our first big goal was to climb the great Halla mountain. It's apparently the highest mountain in Korea. It's also a volcano with a gigantic crater/lake in it. So we set out early on this epic hike. We looked at a map of the mountain and chose the best possible route for the time we had. There were some nice views and we even ran into some small mountain deer. We kept looking at the top, thinking about how worth it this looooong hike would be in the end. But alas, hours later, we came to a place where the trail we chose ended...
Ricky likes to look on the bright side, but today the trail to the bright side was closed.
(That's the top in the background)
Lucky for Ricky, Tiff was there with her sunshiny smile to lift his spirits and motivate him to not give up.
So we did press on. And somehow, we immediately found ourselves at the top of mount Halla. It was amazing. As you can see, we were able to take a breathtaking picture from above the massive crater. We were very proud.
Then we got bored and left.
Being a volcano, we saw a lot of volcanic rock. Bet you didn't see that coming.
There really were some great views along the way. The vertical picture here shows a part of a fun Korean legend. Some believe that these points along this ridge are soldiers from hundreds or thousands of years ago. We don't really remember the whole story, but basically there were hundreds of these men and they all had the same grandmother. Yada yada, a few things happened, and she ended up eating them. Not sure how, we think it was an accident.
Speak of the devil. Here's Tiff with said grandmother. She's kind of cute for a cannibal of soldier grandsons.
And this is the most famous and highly regarded of all traditional Korean figures. Dol-harubang, they call him. He is the grandfather of Korea and he watches over the people.
We were at a park that had a big waterfall. This wasn't it, but Tiff is really good at finding beautiful scenery.
After being asked dozens of times to have our picture taken with loud teenagers, we found the waterfall. A really nice security guard offered to take our picture with the waterfall.
Along the coast, we found another waterfall. This one falls right into the ocean.
That evening, we went to a place known as Sunrise Peak. It was enormous and amazing, but it was foggy, so we didn't get many good pictures. But fortunately for us, a very talented senior picture photographer was there to take our senior pictures. What do you think? We're no actors, but we did what he told us to do and we were pretty happy with the results.
After we paid the man, we hiked the steep path to the top of the Sunrise Peak, where we would see the natural beauty that lie inside of it's also famous crater. Clearly, mother nature was on our side and we walked away with the most amazing pictures. We can't show you any of them, they're too good.
More adventures on Jeju Island to come...
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