Day 16: Exploring the island
This morning we started with a slow served but tasty breakfast. Since it is our first full day on Jeju Island, a tour around some sites is planned, starting with the traditional Seongeup folk village. In this small village, some 600 people live in around 300 houses. The village itself is about 600 years old, with some of its houses being over 300 years of age. We got a tour from the 80-year-old village elder, who could tell us quite some about their lifestyle in relatively okay English. The main thing that we learned was that their gender roles are enormously unfair, with the married men having to do nothing and married women having to do all the work. After realising it is probably a good thing that the younger generations leave this lifestyle behind, we got some sales talk on tea and facial cream. Then we left for our next destination, further to the east side of the island.
The next set of destinations were a combination, starting with Gwangchigi Beach. This black volcanic sand beach had a great view of the next destination: Seongsan Ilchulbong meaning sunrise peak. This UNESCO World Heritage Site is a dead volcano which erupted only 5000 years ago, which is quite young for a volcano. The short half-hour climb was really worth it, since it provided a great view of the ocean but also a large part of the island. Far in the distance, the outline of the central Hallasan Mountain was even visible. After making the trek back down again, it was time for some local cuisine, which was a bit too fishy for some.
The last stop of our tour was the Manjanggul Cave, another UNESCO World Heritage Site. This is one of multiple caves on the island formed through flowing lava. Due to being formed directly from the cooling rock, a lot of interesting structures could be seen, which have been preserved outstandingly even though it’s between 200 and 300 thousand years old. One significant structure is the 7.6 metre lava column, which is the largest in the world.
After finishing up the tour, we returned to our hotel for some quick dinner. We still had something planned for the evening: “the secret evening activity”. Since it is so secret, I won’t tell you any of how that went, so you should ask your favourite SPOCK7 member when they return.