Jusangjeolli Cliffs and Hallim Park

The Cliffs or Pillars are located on the south part of the Island, about 10 minutes from our hotel. About a 2km stretch of coastline has these lava formations that are hexagonal and cubic pillars. It's really quite amazing. They offered tours to see the coastline from a boat which would have been awesome but we'll just have to do it another time.

Hallim park is on the West side of the island and had a small sampling of everything Jeju island had to offer - a lava tube, a limestone cave, a Korean folk village, and several gardens. They even had a rock and bonsai garden. David enjoyed climbing on some of those rocks.

News Flash

Several months ago, A's promotion recommendation form was submitted to the promotion board. He did not get a DP or definitely promote recommendation but he did have a fairly glowing recommendation. Nonetheless, other candidates in his situation had a 34% promotion rate to Lieutenant Colonel so we were a little nervous. Well, tonight we received a phone call from his commander and .... A made it! Congratulations! We are all very proud of you and thank the Lord for our blessings. He'll most likely pin-on in another year or so.

Now back to our regularly scheduled posts.

Seongsan Ilchulbong "Sunrise Peak"

SI is a dormant parasitic volcano on the Eastern side of Jeju island. Grass now grows in the crater and beyond the peak is the ocean. It was a fairly easy hike to the top but very windy. David thought running down the grassy hill was the best part. Just to the North is Udo Island which you can take a ferry out to - we didn't and there's also a little cove where the women divers work out of. These women dive for seafood and shellfish w/o any apparatus. A and David saw some one morning at the beach by our hotel but they are all over the island.

This shot is near the top, looking down at the coast. David just happen to stick his head out.
At the top. You can see the crater behind us.









David and the hill

Jeju adventures

Jeju's landscape is indeed beautiful. We saw waterfalls and hiked up parasitic volcanos. David and I were still fighting colds so we didn't do as much as we wanted. The center of the island is a dormant volcano known as Hallasan. It would have taken about 3-4 hours to hike up and another 3 hours to hike down. Unfortunately, we weren't able to do this hike but should we ever return, it's on our list. Instead we visited Cheonjeyeon waterfall, Seongsan Ilchulbong, Jeongbang waterfall, Jusangjeolli cliffs, and Hallim Park.

I'll start w/the waterfalls on this post. Cheonjeyeon falls were actually a series of 3 waterfalls. We only saw 2 since, I didn't feel up to going down a set of stairs to see the 3rd one. There's a 7 nymph bridge that we crossed in the park. This area appeared to be popular w/honeymooning couples.

Jeongbang waterfall is supposed to be the only waterfall in Asia that falls into the ocean. David was not impressed by the falls but found the rocks there to be much more interesting. The video says it all. You can see a part of the waterfall in the background.

The Hyatt Jeju

I found this hotel on Orbitz and got a good deal on our room. The hotel is located on the southern part of the Jangmun Resort area right on the water. We enjoyed waking up and looking at the ocean each morning from the room's balcony. The balcony was also a great place to hang out while David was falling asleep at night. Normally, we wait it out in the bathroom - not very romantic especially if you are trying to eat dinner as well. The large koi pond in the lobby area drew David like a magnet. He would watch it as we rode up and down the elevator and tried various times to catch a fish. Breakfast places are not common in Korea and rather than trying to find a place, we ended up having the ridiculously expensive breakfast buffet at the hotel. I must say it was a very nice set up and it ended up being our best meal of the day. There's also something luxurious about eating breakfast by the ocean. We commented more than once that David was indeed living the good life. How many toddlers enjoy breakfast by the ocean? The beaches connected to the property were pretty nice too. So, we had a pretty good start to our vacation.

Jeju Island Part 1

We knew we were going on vacation in September after a big peninsula wide exercise. A worked 2 weeks from 2 PM to 2 AM so he was ready to get away. We decided to head to Jeju Island - the Hawaii of Korea for 3 nights and did not do any extensive planning for this trip. Jeju is south of Korea, a 50 minute flight from Seoul or a 5 hour boat ride. We opted to fly. Also, the day before we left I woke up with a fever and stayed in bed nearly all day. Our vacation almost ended up not happening. I felt well enough to go but had 2 more nights of fevers in Jeju which limited what we actually did. Getting there was pretty uneventful except that David understood a little more that we were actually getting on a plane and flying up to the sky.

We arrived to a very drizzly and wet tropical paradise and quickly got our rental car from Avis. The car came equiped with a GPS which just required you to type in the phone number of your destination and it would route you there. Unbeknowst to us, the GPS would also warn you when your were approaching the speed cameras and cautioned us to slow down. At first we didn't know what it was doing - allowing A to go exceed the speed limit and follow the flow of traffic and other times it would beep annoyingly. We learned to follow the GPS.

Our hotel was a pleasant surprise and most of our pictures are actually of this resort. You can see the pics in the next post.