The last month has been so busy – for reasons which will shortly become clear – that I have scarcely had time to write, but I desperately, desperately want to before hte memories fade. It’s been 47 days since I wrote, so I owe 4700 words. I also have pictures to accompany all this, but that will come later.
So Jeju, Seoul, and now South Africa have been a whirlwind. It’s a safe assumption to make that if you wonder where I am at any particular moment, it’s probably trapped in the midst of a desperate crisis with a happy ending at the back of it. Let me try and hit some of the high points.
Jeju was relaxing and idyllic as it promised to be. Our hotel, the VIllae Resort, sat about a 40 minute drive from the main city on the island. The bus dropped you by a desolate patch of highway, cars whizzing past a bare meter or two from your soft, eminently-squishable body, and you had to trudge along the side for a bit until you came to a narrow road winding up into the greenery. Thence, it was past a few farmer’s fields, a slag yard with two angry-looking dogs on a rather weak-looking chain, and finally winding past several construction zones until you caught the scent of salt on the air and the sound of waves in your ears. Then you found the Villae Resort, a hotel lined with the same black basalt that all buildings on Jeju seem to be founded on, and a few spartan but comfortable rooms a short walk from the coast. Around there were only other hotels and a few touristy restaurants, with a single 7-11 inside the hotel to supply basic needs.
To get anywhere was a hike, as you can imagine. I would walk Snow in the mornings past a horse paddock and on to the coast road, where he would amuse himself chasing the wharf roaches and trying to make friends with crabs. The waves would pound the black rock beneath, while Korean couples walking their dogs or taking selfies by the sea were constantly wandering by. The beach was a short taxi ride away – we stopped and got donuts once – and was big, broad, and sandy. Snow loved to run in the sand, but absolutely refused to touch hte water, not even crossing a so much as a centimeter to join us on a sandbar. Koreans learning to surf bobbed in the waves, I tried to soak in some sun (Kaj insisted that I be tan when we met her family, she couldn’t bring a pale-as-a-ghost white guy home), there were a few places nearby to bring food for a picnic, it was nice.
Some days we’d venture further afield. We took a two-hour bus ride winding around the flanks of Halla-san to the O’Sulloc Green Tea fields (one restaurant – a small jam store of all things, scarcely big enough to hold the owner and two customers at once – had a massive queue outside that grew and grew as we watched, until nearly two dozen Koreans were milling around on the streets of the little village the bus stop was in. We vowed to return to check it out. We never did), wandered the fields, watched people, took photos, drank the tea, then promptly got lost on the way home and had to call a cab after wandering rural back roads for a bit. Another day we road into Jeju City itself, found the best beef restaurant either of us had had in Korea, walked a short (I insisted) or a long (she insisted) distance to a public park and museum, which was regrettably closed but had neat rocks outside, and then hauled ourselves back home.
One day we [REDACTED].
I pushed myself hard up the punishing mountain slopes, carefully timing my pace to the frequent mile markers on the trail, but it was hard, hard, hard. I quickly found myself getting worn down, but I kept going, reaching the assigned checkpoints one fater another in good time. Sometimes I had to sit and gather my strength on the trail, then march double-time through the next section. Wearily, I staggered into the assigned checkpoint at 11:58, where a smiling guard waved me towards the summit.
I looked at the three kilomters of uphill hiking remaining, and decided that discretion was the better part of valor today. Instead I came back down over several hours, hitched a bus ride home, and stumbled back to the resort (remember those winding roads?) just after dark, where I fell into bed.
In this fashion we whiled away the time on Jeju, until the 9th of September.
Gwangju Dreaming 