Chuseok holiday was another time for fun and games. Billie and I decided to jump on the ferry and head to the "Hawaii of Korea", an island called Jeju.
8am saw us ship off from the docks and it was blue skies and fine weather. I made a couple of Korean friends on the boat, and they kept me entertained for the 3 hour (which ended up being a 5 hour) trip.
Some of my company on the ferry
Sadly, as is becoming all to common on any of my planned trips, as I rolled off the ferry at the other end, the clouds rolled in and by the time I found our cabin... it had started raining.
Rocks on the wild and wet shoreline
That night and all the next day, I was in a foul mood. My friends had hired a car for the 5 days, and after a half hour ride in the pouring rain, I decided to ditch Billie and go for the dryer option. My mood very much reflected the weather and all day I couldn't get out of a funk... until 6pm.
We were on our way back home and it was getting dark, when we spotted a sign: ATV's. After a discussion that lasted all of 5 seconds, we pulled in and all 7 of us went to check out the quad bikes. They were asking 20 000 won for a 20 minute ride (that's about a $1/minute) but after seeing us hesitate, the lady dropped the price to 15 000 won and won us over.
The quad crew
I have to say, those 20 minutes (which I'm sure turned into more like half an hour) were some of the best 20 minutes I've spent on a motorised vehicle. The leaders soon split us into the advanced riders and beginner riders.
The old lady motioned I was to follow her, and I was thinking "Oh great, were gonna be putting around for the rest of the ride". I couldn't have been more wrong. This lady was crazy. She had us fish-tailing around courners, jumping over rocks and going up and down virtical hillsides.
By the end of the ride, I was almost dancing in one spot I was so happy.
That night (and all the nights we stayed there) we had a wonderful dinner cooked for us by our resident chef, JP.
Our Chef
The next day, Garrett and myself decided to take our bikes out for a spin. He was going up the mountain to find a crater to hike and I decided to follow him. Well, this turned out to be a little more difficult than I expected. As soon as we got to the mountain road, the fog came in and in no time I could hardly see a few feet in front of me. By the time we reached the parking lot for the start of the hike, Garrett had decided it wasn't much point hiking, as he wouldn't be able to see any of the scenery anyway. We gave the rest of the crew a call to see what they were up to and much to our chargrin, we were informed that they had had sunshine most of the day. It turned out half the island was covered in cloud and the other half was sunny.
We finally found the beach the others were at and had a quick bite to eat. Garrett decided to stop there, but I was chaffing for some proper riding, so I jumped on the bike and went off for some fun. And fun it was. By the end of the day, I'd racked up about 300 km's of mountain and forrest riding. I was happy again.
The next day started out a little later, and much sunnier. Half the group got up at the crack of dawn to go tackle the biggest mountain on Jeju, Halla-san.
Meanwhile, Jessica, Tyrone and myself went and met up with Jessica's friend and rock climbing buddy Dan, and his friend Danielle. Dan took us down to an amazingly beautiful (and very rocky) creek and here we spent most of the day trying to scale a virtical rock face.
The crazy small rock-climbing shoes I forced my feet into.
It was a few hours of sitting around watching intently, trying to pick up some pointers, followed by about an hour of intense full body, physical exertion. It was incredibly difficult (for us beginners) and Dan was a hard taskmaster, not letting me back down when I felt I couldn't go on, and always encouraging me to "give it one more good try". I was very thankful for this when I finally reached the top.
You want me to put my feet where???
Trying to scramble over the underhang
Trying again without the torturous shoes.
Actually, I didn't make it all the way to the top. I was getting very close when I noticed a massive boulder (which we would have to climb over) had come away from the rock wall. After Dan climbed up to check it out, we decided that it wasn't safe to climb over... so this became the new "top" of the climb.
Getting up there.
At the new "top.
After this, with very little convincing, I talked Tyrone into jumping on the bike with me and headed back to the ATV place. I was having a lot of trouble finding where it was, but passed another place that offered ATV rides and decided to give it a go. This one was different from the first. The ground was much more flat, but it did have mud patches to play in. It was fun, but I told Tyrone the other place was better, so we decided to go there as well.
Once again, we had about half an hour of adrenaline filled fun and adventure. It was one of the guys who took us out this time, and there were only the two of us riding with him, so it was full throttle the whole way. I was very impressed with how Tyrone went, considering he'd never ridden before.
All in all, it was an amazing trip and I can't wait to get back over there again for some more fun.
No comments:
Post a Comment