Road Trip!!!

Old grain mill.


Summit Crater of Mt. Halla. The highest peak in Korea.

Josh, Ashley, Mel, Pedro and I just returned from an awesome week long road trip around the Southern part of Korea. We visited Jeju island which was advertised as the Hawaii of Korea. Pedro endured the 5 hr. ferry ride with only minor sea sickness and was stoked to circumambulate Jeju upon our arrival. We drove to the southern most campsite in all of Korea and set up camp for three nights.

We befriended the slightly deranged caretaker of the campground Kim In Soo. He served as our impromptu guide for a couple of days. In Soo had the amusing habit of blaming every weird American or English language related thing on Gogie Bushie (Gogie means penis in Korean). Somehow Josh's name also translates into Korean as Gogie. The first day was spent on a fifth class ecology hike that culminated in drinking tea with a monk and stealing plants (In Soo wanted them for his mini garden things) from the temple. Later in the day we went skinny dipping, ate sushi on the beach, bought some oyster cross abalone things from a hanyo (female diver) and ate those raw on the beach too. They tasted mediocre and were more chewy than my mountaineering boots.

The second day was spent climbing Halla-san, the highest mountain in Korea. We saw virtually no one except the ranger that yelled at us on his megaphone for being in a closed area. In Soo claimed to have a permit, but I am guessing that he didn't by the rate we skedattled when we saw the ranger. It was really nice to hike in an alpine environment without tons of other people. The next day we bid our farewell to In Soo and meandered back toward Seoul. We saw some beautiful tea fields, ate lunch with monks at an awesome temple and drove through beautiful valleys where they still were planting rice by hand.

It was a great road trip!