Saturday morning, I was mostly a bum. I slept in, packed things up and puttered around with a book for awhile. After I checked out of my hostel, I had about two hours to kill before it was time to return the car and head back to the airport. I decided that I would go check out one more park. While I was driving to the park, I passed a beautiful strip of beach, so I stopped there first.
There were these strange piles of rocks on one section of the beach. I've seen piles like this on the tops of mountains before. I think it might be connected with Buddhism in some way.
This rock pile was off by itself, almost like it was keeping watch or something.
When I finally made it to the park, the first place I came across was a set of caves. Just outside of the entrance were more rock piles. Only these had faces carved into them.
This state was inside of the first cave. It is somehow supposed to represent wisdom.
Speaking of statues, there were quite a few of them in this park. This was near the folk village. It is a Korean woman in traditional dress.
Jeju wasn't always part of Korea. There are about 45 of these statues, kinda like the ones at Easter Island, that are left from the island's pre-Korea days. It has become a symbol of the island, and you can see these things EVERYWHERE now.
There were some really adorable scarecrows in the folk village.
If I were a crow, I don't think I'd be intimidated.
This was in one of the vegetable gardens at the folk village.
There was also a bird exhibit. They had some lovely birds, but every single one of them was behind a chain link fence. Do you have any clue how hard to is to see birds, much less photograph them, when they are behind a chain link fence?? ::Sigh::
There were even a few white peacocks, but I couldn't get any of them to face me while they had their feathers all ruffled. This one was particularly upset about something. I could hear him hissing from 50 feet away!
More statues.
There are several natural waterfalls in Jeju that are quite famous. I didn't make it to any of them, but I think that just about every park I was in had its very own waterfall.
There were lots of lovely flowers in the park as well.
After I'd seen all of the sights, I returned my car and got on a plane to come back to Seoul. I had a window seat, and I was struck by two things. I'd heard that Korea was 70% mountains, and now I definitely believe it. The whole country is covered with mountains. Pretty much every single flat space is built up. Korea is so densely populated, that even in what looked like really small towns, there were high rise apartment buildings. I'm convinced that all apartment buildings in Korea look exactly the same. They're quite easy to pick out, even from 30,000 feet!
It was also quite obvious when Seoul came into sight. There were buildings for as far as I could see. Literally. It was like looking at the ocean, only instead of it being water that ended with the earth's curve, it was buildings. Also, I was reminded again that Seoul doesn't really have a distinctive skyline. All of the buildings are tall. The tall buildings are everywhere. There is no such thing as "downtown" like there is in American terms. You always know you are downtown in an American city, because that's where the skyscrapers are, and all of the other crazy busyness. In Seoul, the whole city looks basically the same. Of course, there is a city center type of downtown, but it's entirely different.
It was kinda sad to go sit at a bus stop and wait for my bus after three and a half days of glorious freedom with a car, but I knew I was back in Seoul when my bus ride from the airport to my apartment took nearly twice as long as my flight from Jeju to Seoul. All in all, it was a good trip, but I was glad to see my apartment again.
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