We arrived in the late afternoon our first night, and after a quick stop at the tourist information booth in the airport for maps and guides we were off to our hotel. Our hotel was nice and right across of the ocean and a large boardwalk. The nicest thing was our bed. I think it was a double, but it was soft...and that really is a luxury in Korea where hard beds are the way to go. It was so nice to sleep on. The next day we caught a bus off to the far side of the island to go to the beach. We chose Hwasun beach, mostly because it was a unique beach made from black volcanic sand, and before you get all excited...it just gives the beach a dark brown colour for a distance but up close you can see lots of black grain in the sand. It was neat, but the sand was really hot, I actually burnt the bottom of my feet a little bit when we first got there. There were tables and umbrellas set up along the beach but we sat at one, and were quickly accosted by a couple guys who worked there telling us it cost $40 to use the umbrella which quickly dropped to 20 and then 10, before we walked away. First time I've had someone here try to rip me off that badly, the most part, Korea is good for not ripped people off, from what I've seen at least. The next day we went of to Halla-san which is the tallest mountain in South Korea. It was hot but we had a good long hike. We took a lot longer than I expected, but we had no other plans for the day so it didn't really matter. The first part of the climb was through a forest which suddenly opened up into huge fields on top the of the mountains. When we got down, we were a little worried about buses and whether or not we had missed out last ride back. We sat nervously waiting to see if a bus would come as we let the odd taxi pass us by, but finally along came a bus, we believe the last bus with only us and another Korean couple on it. We were lucky to ride on that bus though because the driver showed us an interesting point along the road on the way back. There is a section of road just a little ways from Halla-san, that is called the Mysterious Road Section or something like that. It's a really neat place where the road looks like it is going up hill, but actually is going downhill, some sort of natural optical illusion. The driver put the bus in neutral and we watched with delight as the bus slowly rolled faster and faster "uphill" while there were people outside following their bottles of water as they rolled "uphill" too. It was a very nice, little, unexpected bonus that day.
This is at the airport, just after we arrived. That's the airport in the background.
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This is the view from our hotel room. The large building on the left is an outdoor stage, that had a different musical performer each night. We got a free concert every evening from the comfort of our own room.
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This at the black volcanic beach, blowing up a tube that Tiff got a couple weeks before on a trip to the beach with Meredith.
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On one side of the beach was a big concrete dock for large transport ships and the other side was this. Guess which way we looked most of the day.
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Ribbit!
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When we first got there the beach was quite empty but then it filled up after lunch. There boundary markers for the swimming area was really close to shore...only out to my stomach or so, and the life guards were going power crazy keeping people back even as the tide was going out. Eventually the people rebelled and fought their way a short distance past the markers.
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Just a nice picture.
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This was a freezing cold stream that fed into the ocean. We aren't sure where exactly it's original lay since it disappeared under a building but it seemed to cold to be natural.
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At the parking lot of the national park just before we started our hike. We've already walked a kilometre or so from where the bus dropped us off.
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We stopped for an early lunch/snack. The trees block out any breeze so you got hot and worn down quickly in them. We needed a little energy boost.
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We have just emerged from the trees. It was on Halla-san that Tiffany fell in love with the little mountain springs that are all over Korea. There are the only water you can drink directly from the tap.
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There were literally hundreds of butterfly and thousands and thousands of butterflies in the air over the open fields. Anyway you looked, the sky was pokka-dotted black. Unfortunately pictures didn't turn out that well of them.
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The Korean either says "Elevation" or "This is just starting sucker!" The writing for them is very similar I find. Although by the time we got to this part the steep climbing was over and it was more of a walk than hike.
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Sadly, we couldn't go all of the way to the top because of construction or something on the trails. This is us at 1700m...the top is the rocky part you can see behind me. It is an old volcano with a lake where the crater use to be. All though we didn't get to see it first hand, there was a nice little board showing us what we were missing.
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Cute...
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...pictures.
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Some of the fields on the top were full of volcanic rocks. Very pretty.
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The sun was starting to droop in the sky.
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"Yeah! Downhill!"
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And just before we reentered the tree covered part, a deer came bouncing up next to us and started eating away. We watched it for a while before I nagged Tiff into moving along, since my anxiety about the bus was starting to emerge.
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