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Published: September 19th 2010
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Gremlin!
The gremlin that pulls all the cars up the hill and the dog that was really cute in it's mouth. Seongsan Ilchulbong
Friday Friday was our last day on Jeju Island. We planned on mainly visiting the Sunrise Peak, kind of like a mini volcano, which you can see above. Our flight wasn’t until the evening so we weren’t too pressed for time. We also checked out the Mysterious Road, and a museum, but they didn’t compare to the mountain.
In the morning we got up and checked out of the hotel. We were staying on the northwest side of the island and the mountain was on the northeast side so we had about an hour drive until we got there. On the way we passed by a sign that said “Mysterious Road.” We had read about it in a couple of guides about the island and were intrigued, so we decided to make a quick detour and check it out. The road appears to be going uphill however if you put your car in neutral you will role, surprisingly quickly, uphill. The pictures can’t quite do it justice since it had a lot to do with illusion. The story is that some kind of ogres, goblins or something else, I don’t really remember, pushes and pulls
Mysterious road
Car driving uphill in neutral. Take that Bill Nye! the cars up the hill. There are a lot of stone sculptures in the area, one of which you can see in our pictures. Another method to test the road is to poor water on the ground and then watch it flow uphill. Both were very cool! Overall it was a fun little pit stop.
Shortly thereafter we arrived at The Sunrise Peak, called Seongsan Ilchulbong in Korean. It is an archetypal tuff cone formed by hydro-volcanic eruptions upon a shallow seabed about five thousand years ago. Basically, it is formed from a small volcanic eruption in the sea. Over many years a small land bridge formed between Jeju Island and the sunrise peak. So, it was about 34-36 degrees Celsius that day and off we went to climb up this massively steep mountain. Needless to say for anyone who knows how sweaty I get just in normal weather, this was a very uncomfortable venture for me. The views though were amazing and the top was really stunning. I’ll let our pictures speak for themselves.
After getting completely drenched in sweat we descended the mountain and went off to get some food. We went to a really lovely
Sunrise Peak
The sunrise peak from the parking lot restaurant right off of the sea and had a wonderful seafood lunch. Scott is not a big seafood fan but he was a real trooper for us. We had a grilled fish of some kind which was deliciously salty and flakey and then a seafood stew with mussels, clams, prawns and crab. Really it was so good and they said everything we ate was no more than 3 hours old. As in they went out every few hours to catch new food to cook and if they didn’t catch anything, then they just didn’t serve any food. Very cool!
Then we drove around the island a bit, relived its beauty and were off back home for some much needed rest.
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mountain climbing
thanks for the post! i like the gremlin eating the dog.