Kyle in Korea

Although undoubtedly a highlight of the trip, our trip to Loveland was only one hour of our three day trip to Jeju. Another highlight was Udo island, a very small island off the island of Jeju. To get there you catch a car ferry from the ferry terminal that takes only about 15 minutes. I didn’t really know what a car ferry was, but it is actually just what it sounds like: a ferry that transports cars and has some room for people, too. Since only like 1700 people live on Udo island, they have to travel to Jeju frequently to go shopping, go to work, and visit friends and family. To do so, they simply drive their car right into the ferry and then 15 minutes later drive it right off the ferry and into traffic on Jeju. The car ferry held about a dozen sedan sized cars.

When  we got to Udo, we had only an hour an a half before the last ferry left for Jeju, so we rented a golf cart. Although I’m not usually that excited about golf carts, driving one around Udo Island was just tremendous. First of all, you actually drive it AROUND the island. There is very small road that hugs the coastline and took about 45 minutes for us to drive all the way around, including a couple brief stops. Check out a video of Ann driving the golf cart and me annoying her with questions.

Another day, we headed to the far southern end of Jeju for the city of Seogwipo. The best part about the city is its waterfalls and ocean front views. The waterfall we went to (Jeongbang Pokpo) dropped over 70 feet directly into the East China Sea.

Jeju is famous for “haenyeo”, who are female free divers who dive into the coastal areas around the island for seafood and seaweed. We found a couple of these women near the waterfall selling abalone to tourists. Ann and I bought one and tried it, and although I normally like shellfish, we both agreed that it was not very good raw.

The abalone are on the far left. I think the large middle bucket was full of sea cucumber and the bucket on the far right possibly contained sea squirt. I don’t actually even know that what we ate was abalone, I am only guessing because Jeju is well known for abalone, and also that people are unhappy because the price of abalone has shot up in recent years. We paid about 10 dollars for a single small one, served raw on the half shell, accompanied by garlic and a spicy red sauce. We ate about half of it and decided maybe to try it cooked, later on in the trip.

After hiking back up the cliffside from the waterfall, we treated ourselves to some coconut milk and talked about how we wished we enjoyed raw abalone, but actually did not.