In Which We Revisit a Great Place

Today was a day off for us. It's Korean Labor Day or something. We were totally cool with that, and FINALLY we had a holiday/weekend where the weather was good. We decided to head back to Udo one last time before we go home, since it's a really fun place. We took the ferry out there, as usual, but the difference is, I got to make a track on my tablet for the ferry ride and for our gallivanting around the island on a scooter. I'll post those, don't worry. At any rate, we had a great time. As I mentioned, we rented a scooter again, and it was sweet. Nancy let me drive the whole time, which was nice of her. We didn't do anything too wild, but we went to a place or two where we hadn't been before, and we also saw a couple of our coworkers, who had gone the cheaper and probably more healthy route and rented bikes. For us it's about as cost-effective to share a scooter. Udo is just an overall nice place, and even though there were quite a few people out there, it didn't feel too crowded. The ocean smells cleaner there, too, much better than the ocean near the city that smells like dead fish a lot of the time. Anyway, here are some pictures.

A picture of Seongsan Ilchulbong (say that ten times fast) from the ferry terminal. We climbed that later.

This awesome boat was at the ferry terminal next to us. We think it was headed to the mainland, but we weren't sure. I'm going to Google it, actually. 

Then it left while we were waiting for our boat to leave. I just Googled it. Turns out it was heading to the mainland. Pretty cool.

On the ferry.

Made it!

In case you were interested, this is what the track we took.

Nancy said I should take a picture of her with this mermaid boob statue.

Classic Jeju and outlying island coastline. 

Nancy's hair looked awesome in the wind.

I'm lookin' pretty good too, not gonna lie.

This is a place we hadn't been before, a rocky beach on the west side of Udo-bong (the peak). This side of the peak is pretty cool looking, too.

We went down to the beach. 

Nancy with a sweet view of Seongsan Ilchulbong.

Then we went to the popcorn sand beach, which had considerably less popcorn this time around, we thought. It wasn't that hot and we weren't equipped for it anyway, so we didn't go swimming, but it's a nice beach anyway.

On the ferry back. They wouldn't let us up on the top deck of the ferry this time like they did the last time we went to Udo, probably because they're being extra cautious since the Sewol disaster.

Here's the track we took on the island. I thought it was pretty cool.

After that we took a walk over to Seongsan Ilchulbong. We've wanted to climb it basically since we got here, since it's like, the poster child for the island, but we've never really gotten around to it. We finally did, and it was pretty cool, despite the droves of Chinese people who were also climbing it (many of them in sport coats or high heels. Hiking in style, I guess.) Unfortunately, I forgot to make a track for this one, but it would have been pretty short. It only took about 15 minutes or so for us to climb up all the stairs to the top. The top had a pretty sweet view and a crater, and there were even a couple people up there explaining how the oreum was formed, though they were doing it in Korean, so I couldn't understand it. Here are pictures from that:

Getting started.

One of the views partway up.

Nancy with a cool rock.

Made it! We asked another foreigner to take this picture for us, because he was there, but he didn't seem to happy about it.

Unfortunately it was pretty hazy today, or we would have had a fantastic view of the island.

Another cool looking rock. I think this one looks like an eagle head.

Overall it was a great outing and a good use of our day off. Tomorrow we have our school's children's day party, and after that it's off to Seoul (American food!) and Sokcho (Seoraksan!) for our vacation! When I told one of my classes that I wouldn't be here on Wednesday (we're taking an extra day off) they kind of freaked out. "TEACHER NOT COME BACK??????" I had to clarify that we would be back on Thursday, we were just going on vacation. I guess that class likes me. Who knew? At any rate, that's about all we've got to talk about at the moment. This is Captain Danger out.