Jeju Island, South Korea - February 27

Sangumburi Crater

10 degrees, overcast

We woke up to rain, but by the time we set out the rain had stopped. Cold I can deal with, but getting wet is hard to avoid. Jeju is an island off of the south west coast of South Korea.

Manjanggul Lava Tube

getting into the lava tube

Our first stop on our morning excursion is to Sangumburi Crater. There is a park (like a national or provincial park at home) built to showcase the crater that is extremely well done and lovely. There are some paved paths and lots of interpretive signs to add to what we learned from our guide. We hike up to the edge of the crater to view it from above. There are also ancient burial tombs at this site. We don’t have nearly enough time to hike all of the trails which would have been a nice thing to do.

tombs at the crater

Next we visit the Manjanggul Lava Cave. This is an underground tube made by a lava flow. There are about 200 steps to get into the tube and then we walked for the kilometer into the 8km tube that is available to visitors. This place is wet and dark and about 10 degrees.

Both of the places we visited today were very different from places we’ve visited recently.

We were back on the boat for lunch and an early afternoon sailing to Seoul.

Today was the first time I’ve ever going through passport control anywhere where everyone is photographed and fingerprinted.