Jeju Island Day 4

It was our last full day and we were determined to make the most of it.  As Bree told us, we just had to "Charge it!".  Andrew and I had hit up basically every big Jeju sight except for Mt. Hallasan, the Manjanggul lave tubes, and Seongsan Ilchubong, commonly referred to as Sunrise Peak.  Mt. Hallasan, the statuesque volcano that lies in the middle of Jeju, was far too much of an undertaking for the hiking abilities of Andrew and me.  Bree and her friends had climbed Mt. Halla and said it was an "easy" 4 to 6 hour hike, but Andrew and I took one look at each other and said, "Uh-uh, no way", we'll admire it from a distance.

We really wanted to see the famous underground lava tubes though, and we were desperate to climb Sunrise Peak.  We headed out early after having a nice breakfast at Tae Gong Gak and then Sylvia showed us how to take the bus to the lava tubes.  The sky was looking really gray, and considering we had had perfect, sunny weather the whole time, we weren't too bummed.  We'd rather be underground or hiking when it rained, rather than on the beach or at the waterfalls.  Sylvia even gave us rain ponchos with our directions, it felt like Sylvia was our mother and she was getting us all ready to get on the bus for school!

The bus ride was a bit long, almost 90 minutes, but it was fine because we were passing through the rain.  We found the lava tubes right away and without wasting any time bought our tickets and headed on down.  The Manjanggul lava tubes are an extensive system of underground tubes that lava rushed through during the last eruption.  This particular site is considered a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and South Korea takes a lot of pride in it and has preserved the area so well that over 8km are open for the public to walk through.  Unfortunately, we had missed the English tour but it was alright because we wanted to hustle through.  It was chilly down there and we were anxious to get to Sunrise peak.  The tubes were really cool though and I'm glad we had kept them on our list.  It reminded me of Howe Caverns, except that they were way bigger and far more dramatic.  It was hard to get good pictures because it was so dark, but we did manage to get a few good shots.

Oh you know, just hanging out in a lava tube, the usual.

After the lava tubes, we got back onto the bus and headed to the town of Seongsan-ri where Sunrise Peak is located.  Sunrise Peak is a volcanic crater that lies slightly off the east coast of Jeju.  In fact, the crater is the most eastern part of the island, which is why it's called Sunrise Peak, because it's the first part the island that the sun hits each morning.  There is one side of the crater that you can climb up but unfortunately you cannot go into the crater, once at the top the center is blocked off.  The hike going up was not bad at all, only about 20 minutes, and most of the way up there were stairs carved into the path.  As expected the view was amazing.  You could see the ocean for miles as well as a panoramic view of Jeju.

Here is Sunrise Peak, we climbed the crater from the left side but we were not able to go down into the grassy middle.

I made it to the top!  To the left is the middle of the crater and to the right is the small town of Seongsan-ri, which lies on the eastern coast of Jeju Island.

We headed back down the path and then did a little shopping at the base of the crater.  There were many souvenir shops and food vendors.  We were exhausted so we got back on the bus shortly after and headed back to the inn.  We asked Sylvia and Peter for dinner recommendations again and they suggested a popular Chinese restaurant nearby.  Unfortunately, it had already closed, we were starving so we settled upon an interesting looking Korean restaurant in the same area.  Andrew ordered kimchi stew and I ordered a scallion pancake and when our food came we were stunned!  Both orders looked like they could feed a small army.  There was so much food and if we had known how big our meal was going to be we would've just shared something.  The food was pretty good though, but not nearly as delicious as the night before.  

Afterwards we stopped at a little cafe around the corner that Sylvia thought we might really like.  She said a lot of foreigners go there and I'm glad we went.  I had a delicious hot chocolate and it was nice to be around other people speaking English for a little bit; for the first time in awhile I don't think Andrew and I were the minorities, there were many other Americans there.  The cafe had a lot of books, most of them in English, and we had fun reading some of them to each other.  The funniest one I picked up was a dictionary on popular English phrases.  It was fun to read about how they defined phrases like "You gotta be kidding me" and "Fish outta water".  We didn't want to end our last night in Jeju so soon, but we were exhausted and we had to catch the airport shuttle at 9 am the next morning, so we headed on back to Tae Gong Gak (that rhymes!).