It’s the end of a quarter and almost time for a 10-day break, so the students and teachers are all pretty frazzled. Patrick manages the gradebook system, which keeps crashing; students are freaking out about their grades; parents weekend and conferences are this weekend. It’s high stress time! Knowing all this was coming, we decided to take a drive to the far side of the island for a brain break last weekend. We were only gone a little over 24 hours, but it was just what we needed.

First stop: the destination of the October “date envelope”, the Manjanggul Caves. These caves are really cool – formed by lava about 300,000 years ago. Lava flowed like a river and as it cooled, a crust covered the top and the hot lava melted deeper, forming large passage-ways we could easily walk down.

The stairs leading from the sidewalk down into the lava tubes at Manjanggul.

We walked through 1km of open cave – including the open-air entrance, past lava “islands”, and the highlight: a place where lava flowed from an upper “river” to a lower one, making a tall column. We met a nice Korean-American woman there who chatted and exchanged photo-taking with us.

“Shark teeth” stagtites in the caves that were a neat purply mineral color.

The largest column of its kind in the world – 7m tall flowing from an upper chamber to a lower chamber some 300,000 years ago. The funky colors are from the lighting, not the rocks!

Next stop: Ilchulbang, or “Sunrise peak”. Just a half hour further down the east coast, this is one of the most photographed spots in all of Jeju. It’s another oreum (failed volcano) with a big crater top. They’ve put steps straight up the steep side, and a 20-ish minute walk gets you a great eastward view over the ocean. It’s a ritual for Koreans to make the climb for sunrise, so we decided to join the crowd.

A walk on the beach right outside our hotel.

We found an amazing hotel room that overlooked the beach and the peak, then wandered the town to find some dinner. Being at the ocean, we went for fresh seafood. A half dozen restaurants all served the same things, so we picked the busiest and ordered the “seafood casserole” – not casserole, but lots of seafood!

Patrick with our seafood casserole dish cooking at the table.

Most of what we ate were bivalves, but I’m not sure what. There were four abalone, some crabs, huge prawns, and a full baby octopus – head, tentacles and all. And yes, I ate that octopus (I skipped the head…).

Some of the stew in my bowl. Check out the eyeballs in that prawn! Pretty, and the best tasting I’ve ever eaten. Yum.

Eating was an experience. Many of the creatures were still alive when they brought out the pan, and we watched them squirm as the stew cooked. Now that’s fresh.

We enjoyed it all, and even got complimented on our chopstick technique by the Korean man next to us!

The shell bowl when we finished. That’s a TON of seafood we just scarfed down!

We fell asleep early to the sound of waves crashing on the beach, then woke in the pitch dark at about 4:45. We were the first people on the mountain, and the nearly-full moon was still up, so we didn’t even need our headlamps. The hike was easy enough, and we were glad for wind-proof layers and some dry breakfast at the top.

Squid boats off of sunrise peak – like a city in the ocean.

The crater at the top of Ilbulbang (sunrise peak).

We sat and watched dozens of Koreans follow and sit in the “viewing area”. It was pretty cloudy, so the sunrise wasn’t spectacular, but the people watching was pretty great. The crater was beautiful and we watched the all-night squid fishing boats come in before heading back down.

The horizon’s sunrise wasn’t great because of clouds, but when we got back from our hotel, this was the view out the window! Sunrise take 2 over the peak.

Final destination: U-do island. Just a 10 minute ferry ride from a port nearby, we had heard great things. Plus, Udo has its own Olle trail, and we’re on a mission to tackle those, so we headed over and hiked the 8 mile loop circling most of the edge of the island.

Beth and Patrick in front of some gorgeous cliffs on Udo island.

View from the high point on Udo island. Check out the distant village – all the houses and buildings have bright primary-colored rooftops!

An unidentified squishy object. I was thinking jellyfish, but it was really solid for that. Funky!

Udo is known for peanuts, and we happened to be there for the peanut festival! It’s harvest time, and they were serving peanut everything! Peanut ice cream (tasty enough), peanut/honey-filled fry bread (delicious), peanut makeli (unfiltered rice wine – not good), and lots of straight up peanuts.

Peanuts, freshly harvested, drying on tarps on Udo.

NEWS FLASH. I ate peanuts. And you know what – they were actually pretty good. They didn’t taste like any peanut I’d eaten before. A couple things had the peanuty after taste that made me go for some palette-cleansing, but most of them were just slightly sweet and crunchy. Woah. Life changing. (For those who know me less well – I HATE peanuts and peanut butter and all things related. Always have. Still do. Except these funky Udo peanuts, I guess!).

Udo selfie – still smiling even after eating peanuts!

We left the island around 3pm and drove back home. It was a jam-packed 24 hours, but a great break from school! Looking forward to seeing more of that side of the island in the coming months.