I had been to Jeju once before, I stayed on the south side of the island and I remember only a handful of things from the trip. 1) it was for a wedding, 2) the black pork was amazing, 3) I barely left the hotel. Suffice to say, my first trip to Jeju was fairly limited in scope. With a dedicated trip to explore the island, this time would be different. Or would it?
The expectation of our next trip to be less-city, and more-nature with a focus on the great outdoors and perhaps some hiking. Korea has some amazing wilderness and we had settled on Seoul, as we wanted some city, and Jeju as the destination to explore the coast lines, hike the mountains and eat more black pork. Unfortunately this visit to Jeju was marred by poor weather. Poor weather meaning storms and rain. Despite the short flight, we arrived at the hotel at around 3 pm, after being convinced to upgrade our room, which was amazing we proceeding straight to a nearby Laundromat, where with the help of Google translate navigated the Korean coin-operated laundry service. It had Greek AirBNB vibes all over again, but we were feeling fairly pleased with ourselves as the hotel was charging 5000 KRW per item, we had managed to do an entire load for 10000 KRW. It also gave us an opportunity to continue with the Herbert book 'Dune', a book that we were both engrossed in. Actually engrossed might be somewhat misleading, she wanted to watch the movie, well I did too, but she wanted to watch it this trip, of course we had to read the book first. At this point in time we were about 40% through the book, so there we sat, watching the clothes spin, feeling if it was dry, inserting more coins, followed by more reading. Our first meal of Jeju was of course, Black Pork later that evening. Amazingly delicious, just writing this post makes me think about the pork.
Day 2, was a wash out, we drove up the cost had some abalone congee and stone-pot rice and retired back to the hotel, where we read some more while enjoying the hotel room. Korean fried chicken for lunch followed by sauna and spa action before eating what can be best described as a seafood smorgasboard. Live abalone, octopus, crab, calamari, squid all squirming in a pot of boiling soup.
Day 3, was the only day that wasn't supposed to rain out. We had decided that this would be the day to hike Korea's tallest mountain, Mount Hallasan. We opted for the "easier" (although, not entirely sure why I had convinced myself that I had read that it was easier), but unanimously the more scenic route of the various routes up. We pre-booked mountain permits (free) and proceeded to start the day at 7 am, driving to Gwaneumsa Temple, that was actually not the right starting spot, we proceeded up the 8.7 km hike. It was hard work going up, the mountain has a 12:30 cut off to reach Samgakbong Shelter, which we reached in good time. Reaching the shelter prompted morning tea (some Onigiri) , but also, the clouds parted (or more likely we were up above the clouds) and we had sunshine, the first in 3 days. All up it took us just under 4 hours to get to the summit. The 8.7 km trail is actually broken up into: 3.2 km green tail, 2.8 km red trail, 2.7 of yellow then red to get to the summit. Enjoyed lunch on the top of Mount Hallasan, a kimbap, after about 30 minutes, we started the hike down. Which, I can't tell, but was less enjoyable that the ascent. It took 3 hours and 30 minutes to get down the mountain. Gravity is the best, although my knees and ankles were feeling it after. We met some Sydney-siders on the way back who had spent 3 weeks in Korea, which broke up the last 20% of the hike. Black pork for dinner followed by Dune, part 1. She fell asleep half way through the movie.
Day 4, our last day, grabbed some mumguk and hangover soup for breakfast. delicious. Checked out, grabbed some sashime and cutlass fish (the last item on the Jeju eat's list) before heading back to Seoul for our last night.
