Day 7: 24 Hours on Jeju Island

We only had one full day on Jeju Island before heading to Busan, so tried to cram as much in as we could in 24 hours. Jeju is a small island off the Southern coast of Korea marketed as the "Hawaii of Korea". Its the #1 honeymoon destination for Korean newlyweds, and we were met at the airport with rows of palm trees. In keeping with our trip theme, we visited both a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a tacky museum.

Our main goal was to make it Mt. Hallasan, the highest mountain in South Korea with a volcanic lake on top. We understood that there would be some snow on top of the mountain, so rented cramp-ons for our shoes from the hostel.

We took an inter-city bus to the trail head - it was a bit chilly, but not too bad. We were excited to see snow flurries since DC decided to skip winter this year. The total hike was 9.6km (about 6 miles) each way - something else we weren't anticipating, I interpreted the website as saying that the hike was 6mi round trip.

We had to reach a shelter 3/4 of the way up by noon to be allowed to hike all the way to the summit. The guide at the visitors center said it would take three hours to that point, but we only had 2 so we booked it up the mountain.

We made it to the shelter with 5 minutes to spare. At this point there was a constant snow cover on the ground, so we put our cramp-ons on and kept walking. It was definitely getting colder as the elevation changed, but we weren't too concerned.

Then out of nowhere, about 1mi from the top, it got really cold. The wind picked up and no amount of layering could block the freezing temps. My eyelashes, eyebrows and hair were all iced over. We kept our heads down and trekked to the summit.

There was a line at the summit to take a picture with a summit, but we were frozen so decided to take a selfie and call it a day.

We practically sprinted the 1.5mi back to the shelter and grabbed some cup-of-noodles. We must have looked pretty pathetic, because a nice man also gave us each a chocolate-marshmellow pie.

After a rest back at the hostel, both Kim and I thought we'd never get warm again. We laid under our bed blankets for a while until we finally got the motivation to get out to look for food. Dinner was a seafood soup and some veggie sushi (gimbap) at a restaurant near the hostel.

After dinner we made the trek over to the infamous Jeju Loveland (stop reading here Grandma!). It is an outdoor sculpture museum created by students at Seoul's Hongik University and completely dedicated to sex.

Phallic shaped statues abounded - some subtle but most not so subtle. It was awkward and hilarious at the same time and we spent about an hour walking through the art.

The gift shop was pretty funny, and we couldn't help but stop for some interestingly shaped cookies...

After that, we called it a night! Our 24 hours in Juju wasn't exactly what I expected, and I'm not sure we got the "most" of the island, but it was still a memorable time. We have 2 more days in Busan and then one and a half in Seoul with Ryan before heading home. Time has flown!