Jeju Island: Hallim Park & Hyeopjae Beach

I’ve gotta be honest here, Hallim park was just OK, we could have skipped this and not have missed a thing. This could be because we have been to a lot of gardens in Korea already, or it could have been that this really is just a subpar place that was way over-priced.  The park was not kept up very well, the gardens were full of weeds and the over all feeling was frankly pretty sad. 

We started by looking at the map and trying to figure out how we wanted to use our time.  The girls were excited about bird exhibit, so we decided to walk towards the birds.  On the way there was saw the two lava tube cave entrance, so we made a pit stop in the lava tubes. It was crazy to walk through a tube made  by air holes during a lava flow.  I could just imagine the holt molten lava flowing and moving and creating air bubbles as it moved, which then cooled into these caves.

The caves are interesting because it is one of the only places in the world where a limestone and lava caves can be found together.  The shells from the ocean made it so the limestone was formed inside the lava tube.  

Caves aren’t really my thing.  After a few minutes, it all feels and looks the same- cold, dark, and damp areas with sometimes just a large cave, and sometimes it has weird rock formations. This one had one weird rock formation; it was a bear and a turtle.  Little A was scared of the rocks, so when I asked her to stand by it for a picture she had a fit.  I did get the picture in the end.

We left the cold cave tunnels and walked on to the birds.  It was a sorry site for sure.  There were huge cages stuffed with sad looking birds.  A lot of the birds were missing feathers.  There were peacocks in cages, and then there were some roaming free.  We all wondered how that roaming peacock won the lottery for being free.  

We found a door to enter the canary cage, so we went in.  We didn’t have any food, but they all flew right to us.  The girls did love having birds fly and jump on them.  I walked away from the door and put my hand out to tell the girls to move, and had five birds fly straight for me and land on my outstretched arm.

Kevin and Monster ended up joining us in the cage and we all had birds landing all over our hands and arms.

We said good-bye to our feathered friends and saw a few more animals.  There were some Ostriches that were missing many feathers.  They were not very pretty to look at, but they were so weird as they moved their heads around.  It looked like their neck and head was a completely separate entity, almost like a snake.  

We decided that we saw enough and were on our way to the exit, we made a small detour through the water garden.  There was a pretty man-made waterfall that we enjoyed.  There were some huge fish in the ponds, and some lily pad on the ocean.

We quickly walked the loop, then called it good.  There were some pretty cool bushes in the water garden that were shaped as animals.  M&M's favorite animal is an elephant, so she was excited to see and elephant bush.

The kids still enjoyed the birds and the caves were interesting, so it wasn’t a complete failure, I just felt we could have used the money and time else-where.

We left Hallim Park and parked across the street at the parking lot for Hyeopjae Beach.  There were signs for the actual beach, but we ended up staying closer to the parking lot where there was part beach and park black volcanic rocks.

The rocks created little tidal pools that all the kids ran straight to.  They found seaweed, shells and some hermit crabs.  

Big Sis and M&M started digging in the tidal pools and found a few oysters fully intact.  They opened it expecting to find a pearl and instead found the muscles and goo from the inside.  Grossed out they tossed it and decided to collect hermit crabs instead. They made a large hill surrounded by a mote, and placed all the crabs they found on the hill.  

Even though there was a beautiful sandy beach just a few hundred meters away, all the kids opted to stay where we were.  They were having so much fun.  We stayed for a few hours, before we all got really hungry.  M&M really wanted to see the sunset on the beach, but we still had about an hour and a half, since the sun didn’t set until 7:33.  We walked down the road and found a pizza restaurant ad enjoyed some amazing brick oven pizza before heading back to the hotel.