Island-Hopping in Korea

During my backpacking trip around Korea, I made several detours to islands off the beaten track. There are some amazing places outside of Seoul and Busan that don't get as much recognition as they should - for instance, did you know that there is a beach where you can actually see fossiled dinosaur tracks?

Sado

The beach in question belongs to an island called Sado. There isn't any sand, just layers and layers of slippery prehistoric rock. Also, there aren't any signs that point the footprints out to you so it takes a bit of hard work clambering around to spot them. The day I was there it started snowing pretty heavily, so I took quite a few spills on my bum before deciding to call an end to it. Although not before I found some pretty cool prints! Some were a bit ambiguous to my untrained eye, but I'm quite sure about the one below:

Gageodo

From Mokpo, I caught a ferry out to Gageodo. The ferry was half empty this time of year; the only other passengers were a party of old folks heading back home after a shopping trip on mainland, and a group of men going fishing.

Four hours later - landfall. I settled into a guesthouse near the terminal, and spent the next two days hiking around the island. The manager of the guesthouse was extremely hospitable - perhaps spurred on by the novelty of a tourist in the middle of winter - and showed up at my door multiple times a day with bottles of warm soy milk and bread.

Manjaedo

From Gageodo I continued on to Manjaedo, home to a mere hundred residents and whose name means Island of a Thousand Treasures.

Manjaedo felt like it was stuck in time. The houses were separated by irregular stone walls, and a large communal vegetable field lay just behind the village. Past the pumpkin patch and little old ladies tending to their crop was the start of a trail that led upwards, first through the woods and then a grove of bamboo, opening up to a cliff edge that overlooked the open sea. The only land visible from that spot was three rocky outcrops, where if your eyes were sharp enough, you would spot men fishing and collecting barnacles.

Over the next few days, strong winds prevented the ferry from returning to the island. A villager watched me wait at the pier in vain every morning, and then advised me to go fishing. This became a bit of a routine. We would have have fresh sashimi on the pier, then I would potter around the island, and be back in time for some spicy fish stew at night.

Ulleungdo

Ulleungdo is actually a volcanic island, and it is surrounded by some of the most beautifully clear waters I saw in Korea. Unlike the other three islands this one is pretty well developed, so there are defined paths leading from village to village. 

The most enduring memory I have of Ulleungdo is of the resident lighthouse keeper, whom I bumped into along a forest trail. We didn't chat for too long, but the next day he turned up at the jetty as I was leaving, and presented me with a huge bag of pumpkin taffy as a goodbye gift. Although he did try to hold my hand after that...