A Week in Jeju

Jeju Island dubbed the “Hawaii of Korea” is a volcanic island located about a 3.5 hour ferry ride from the southern point of Korea or a 25 minute flight from the closest mainland city. I was traveling there with my friend Nicara from August 12th to the 17th. The plan was to bring my car and drive around the island stopping at the beaches and anything along the way that interested us. A day before leaving, that plan didn’t look like it was going to happen; a typhoon (hurricane) was going to hit the island and rain and storms were expected all week, from Sunday to a Friday. I was worried the ferry wasn’t going to run, but even if it was running I didn’t want to go if it was going to be raining the whole time. A friend of mine called the ferry company and they said it was still running. Great.

Sunday
With dread and a negative outlook toward the upcoming week of rain and storms I woke up at 5:45 and drove an hour twenty to the ferry terminal. About 30 minutes into my drive I realized I forgot my camera, I’d gone too far to turn back. I put my car on the ferry, then got my ticket, when I went to the counter the guy said, Joseph? I looked at him bewildered and confused, tired and unable to say, express or ask how he knew in Korean, he understood this and said that I was the only foreigner on the boat; 350 Koreans and I making our way to rainy Jeju. On the boat I started talking to one of the crew members, he mentioned that the typhoon was passing Jeju and was heading toward Japan. I wanted to believe him, but didn’t want to get too excited about not having rain, only to have it rain all week. When I got to Jeju City, located in the north and exact center of the island, I couldn’t check in so I ate lunch, went to a beach for a bit and then picked Nicara up from the airport because she was coming from Seoul. We went back to the motel and then met our other friends who were already on the island for dinner. We had black pig barbecue, one of the island’s famous dishes. Normally,  I don’t care too much for eating touristy place specific dishes, but a friend of mine (YunJi) told me I needed to eat three things while there: black pig, boney fish and peanuts. After dinner I was able to cross one item off that list.

Monday
With 5 nights in Jeju, we booked four different places so that we could drive around the island and stay in that area for the night. Some friends argued against this, but it’s clearly the most logical thing to do. We planned the next two nights in the city Seogwipo, exactly South of Jeju City on the southern part of the island.  Instead of going directly south to we drove around the western coast of the island. First we stopped at Hyapche beach, then continued driving west to Suwolbong peak, we then found a  black sand beach right next to it where we chilled for a bit. The plan was to then go see a waterfall and a beach on the way, but Nicara messed up the spelling (it differed by one letter: Cheonjeyeon vs Cheonjiyeon) in the GPS, so we ended up at the waterfall in Seogwipo (not the one we wanted) and had to drive 25 min back to the other one. We ended the day on the surfing beach!!! It’s the only beach in Jeju that gets waves like that and it was my first time seeing real waves in a year and I couldn’t go in, like so many times in the past I’ve destroyed people’s dreams, mine too was destroyed by a lifeguard telling me I couldn’t go past my knees.  For dinner we had 닭갈비 (Dak-gal-bi), made by stir-frying marinated diced chicken in a gochujang-based sauce with sweet potatoes, cabbage, perilla leaves, scallions, tteok, and other ingredients. It was my first time eating it and it was delicious.

Tuesday
I woke up at 5:15 to hike Mount Halla, the tallest mountain in South Korea at 2,000m. Had to drive 45 minutes to the start of the trail, basically back to Jeju city. This is my time stamp diary and thoughts from the hike:
6:22 Official hike start time
6:42 I saw my first people, a couple coming from the opposite direction, there’s no way they’ve hiked the full trail. It’s only just gotten light
6:46 I rearrange my bag, my water bottle is digging into my lower back, also I’ve begun sweating
6:57 I hear people in front of me they must have gotten an earlier start, I passed them, two older women gingerly walking
7:10 Reached the end of the easy part
7:22 Experiencing slight discomfort in my left leg
8:02: There’s small plants between the stones and steps, pink and white flowers I haven’t seen before. It’s also getting a lot windier
8:12 Passed three guys coming down, they started just after 4 in the morning
8:15 Arrived to the way station, sat down had a granola bar. Went to the bathroom. They have a sign that says if you have to reach this point by 1, otherwise you can’t continue because of the elapsed time
8:21 Started again
8:37 It’s getting harder to lift my legs
8:44 Made it to the last leg of the journey
8:49 It smells like pine trees, my breathing is in short breaths and coming more frequently
9:10 I reached the top!!!! (My phone died right after I took a short video)
9:57 Started back down
10:33 Passed the way station and a little bit after made some old ladies laugh
12:03 Made it back to the car!!! Going down I was half jogging

Foreigner count: 9
Total elapsed time: 5 hours 37 minutes

After the hike all I wanted to do was eat and lay down, I was craving anything but Korean food, so I got McDonalds. I ordered a ton of food and then went back to the hotel and passed out. Nicara and I got dinner and then hung out on the roof deck, which had a beautiful view of the surrounding area.

Wednesday
Our plan was to now drive east along the coast to the eastern side of the island where we would spend our next night. We started the day with two failed attempts to find a beach, eventually we found one with a view of sunrise peak and spent the rest of the day there. For lunch we had really good fish and chips. After, we went back to the beach, hung out until it was closer to sunset and then climbed sunrise peak to watch the sunset.  But before that, I got peanut ice cream, crossing off two out of three of the foods my friend recommended.

Thursday
Our plan was to wake up early to see the sunrise, but the night before we checked the weather forecast for Thursday and it showed 99% chance of rain and storms. We woke up to see it anyway. We couldn’t actually see the sunrise, but it wasn’t raining. I did however fall flat on my ass and back stepping off a mossy rock. We then went back to the room and slept. It ended up raining all day so we couldn’t go to a different beach we wanted to see, but we did go to the lava tubes, and the stone park, both of which were incredible. The lava tubes because it’s a natural tube in the earth created by lava flow that looks as if a giant spacewomen burrowed it’s way through and the museum because it was so well done providing history and information on an aspect so important to Jeju. For dinner food item 3 of 3 was crossed off my list. Yunji found us a really good restaurant to try the boney fish; a set menu and $13.50 a person for a delicious meal well worth more.

Friday
Our plan on was to sleep in, leave the motel around 11, go to Loveland, a sensual and erotic themed sculpture park, have lunch and then get to the ferry terminal for our 16:30 ferry. We weren’t able to do any of that. We woke up to a phone call and messages from the ferry terminal saying the ferry was cancelled. Frantically, we spent some time discussing our options, I had my car so we couldn’t just take a plane and leave it and both of us had going away parties to attend for our friends leaving Korea on Saturday. If we stayed another night to catch the ferry the following day we ran the risk of having the ferry cancelled on us and having to spend another day on the island. We were ready to leave.

We decided to see if the ferry company could put the car on the ferry, while we take a flight, I’d then have to go pick it up at the terminal when it comes or have someone drive it to me. In Korea, they have a service to prevent people from drunk driving, you call and they come pick you and your car up and drop you and it off at your house. It’s really only used within cities or short distances so for us it was way too expensive. I was going to have to go to the ferry terminal assuming it was possible for them to put it on. Nicara went downstairs to “talk” to the front desk person and see what we could do and I talked to my friend YunJi (she’s Korean) to see if she could help and call to see if other ferries were running. Luckily we had her because we wouldn’t have been able to figure out our options. When I went down to see how Nicara was doing I saw her on the computer with google translate going back and forth with the Korean guy. Eventually we figured out we could leave the car at the ferry terminal and they’d put it on the next one, we took a taxi there and to the office and had to again figure out what to do by going back and forth using the google translate app with the person working there. Thankfully enough information was conveyed and he was extremely helpful. He showed us where to put the car, I left my keys hoping they wouldn’t forget it. We arrived to the  the airport at 11:20, the first desk didn’t have any flights to Gwangju (the city closest to us), at 11:22 we asked another and they had seats on an 11:45 to Gwangju. We bought the tickets, went through security, got to the gate and boarded the plane. The plane took off at 11:57 and we arrived to Gwangju 25 minutes later officially ending our vacation.  The next day I got my car from the 20:15 ferry coming in at the ferry terminal.