Tuesday, October 15, 2013

In Which We Return to U-do

So, last time when we went to U-do for Nancy's birthday, we had an awesome time. It was super fun renting a scooter and scooting around the island and seeing all the different things. However, I felt like we didn't see everything the island had to offer, foremost among them the peak (which isn't really that high, but is still a peak) and the view it had to offer. In preface to this actual story, I'd like to point out that every time a weekend is coming up (so, like, every Wednesday) we ask each other, "So, what are we going to do this weekend?" Back home, about every other week I would say, "Let's just relax this weekend, we went canyoneering last weekend" or something like that. However, here, since there's so much to do and we're only going to be here for a year, I don't think that's possible. So, if you're reading this and you're thinking to yourself, "Holy crap, these guys do a lot of stuff!" that's because we don't feel like we can let a weekend go to waste. That being said, I continue with our story.

We ended up having to wait quite a while for the inter-city bus at the terminal, but when we did finally get on, it took a different route out to the port than it took last time, which I thought was faster. It also had better views out over the ocean. It was a perfect day to visit U-do. There wasn't a cloud in the sky and it wasn't even hazy! People always talk about how the air is so clean here, but when I got here, I was like, "Really? The air is clean?" Then I went to Seoul and I realized what they were talking about. Anyway, a lot of days here are pretty hazy, but Saturday was awesome with great visibility. We had a pleasant ferry ride with only one problem: we got on the ferry going to the wrong port on U-do. We didn't realize this for sure until we saw the port we wanted going by and said, "Well, crap." This upended our plans a little bit. We had been planning to walk from the port to the peak, because it was quite close. But we thought it would be too far to walk from this port. We waited for a bus for about twenty minutes, because there is a bus that runs on U-do, but it came and drove straight past the bus stop. Our final decision was just to walk. Turns out that U-do is smaller than we thought. We got to the "trailhead" (I put that in quotation marks because it's not much of a trail or a hike to the peak.), which was on the completely opposite side of the island, in about twenty minutes of walking, even when we had to move over to the side of the road for tour buses that seemed determined to run us over about every two minutes. We also saw a really cute puppy that Nancy almost stole. Here are a couple pictures.

Looking back at Jeju-do from the port. The big mountain is Hallasan, the tallest mountain in Korea.


Nancy totally wanted to steal this puppy. He was pretty cute.

Once we got to the trailhead, we decided it was lunchtime. We ended up buying a corn dog and a bag of potato sticks (which are like french fries, only with the consistency of Styrofoam, but they're surprisingly good). Then we headed up the trail for the peak. It was super pretty, and not too busy, which also made it pretty nice. Here are some pictures from that.

Looking over at Jeju-do. This is supposed to be the best view of Mt. Halla. I'm not complaining.

Seongsan Ilchulbong, also known as Sunrise Peak.


Us with U-do peak (Udobong) in the background. You may notice in this picture and in the preceding one that my hair has developed even more fantastic wings.

Cool lava rock formations on the side of the peak.

Nancy on the peak! And some random people's bags in the foreground.



Looking across the island. So green!

Yeah, it's a pretty small island. 

Nancy on her way back down.

I took another picture of the mountain. Also, the boats in the foreground of this one are pretty cool.


After we came down from the peak, we decided to go up to the other side of the peak, where they have a lighthouse?

Entrance to lighthouse park. Like I said, I have fantastic hair wings.

Cows!

Artistic shadow shot.



They had a cool "lighthouse village" that had a whole bunch of model lighthouses. They had historic lighthouses as well as current ones, including models of all of the lighthouses that are currently operating in South Korea. We only took pictures of a couple of them.

This is a model of the lighthouse at Alexandria, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.
I thought that was pretty awesome.

The actual lighthouse.

This is a Chinese lighthouse that I don't think is actually there anymore, but it's the one we chose to take a picture with.

It wouldn't be Southeast Asia without a whole crapload of stairs!

Current U-do lighthouse.

Old U-do lighthouse, which looked perfectly good to me.

Another picture of the island.

And a picture of another island. And the small communities on U-do. Pretty cool. Nancy says, "That's so cute."




So, that was our most recent adventure. We both had a pretty good time, and I got another opportunity to wear my Korean hiking pants! What more could I ask for? Anyway, that's about all I have to say about this experience. This is Captain Danger out.

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