First Day in Jeju on the Olle Trail

After the adventure that was our trip to Jeju, we were really excited about this trip to the lovely island home of the famous Jeju oranges!

We crashed the first night, and it was much too dark to see anything when we arrived. But our first morning, we woke up pretty early. 🌼🌷🌴

A window had been left open, so we were frozen to the bone — we were not expecting the island to be this cold! Even the main volcano (Mt. Hallasan – tallest mountain in S. Korea!) is snow capped right now! Temperatures have been somewhere between the 40s to 50s F, justifying lugging our jackets around. We have actually been blessed, since we packed clothes expecting a 2 week winter vacation and don’t really have summery clothes on hand. 🤔🙄

Look at that mountain! The bright colors, the fresh air — everything was crisp and damp giving it that clean, open feeling. We may or may not have fallen in love with Jeju at first sight 😂 If you hear us gushing about the sights and people over the next while, it’s cause everything is so amazing!

Anyway, with this as our first view – we started running from window to window. Squeal! Any direction we are greeted with a stunning view! It’s that feeling where something is everything you ever dreamed it could be. . . it met all our expectations and then went way beyond!

To the south is the ocean with its infinite space and fishing boats sailing along the coast.

North is the snow-capped volcanic Mt. Hallasan and the nearby surrounding mountains spread across the landscape. Plenty of green as far as you looked. It’s been so long since either of us were really in the middle of a natural paradise. . . we’d forgotten how much we missed it. 🤩

Our pension is at the far end of one of the twenty-odd marked hiking trails on the island. Having arrived without dinner, we were now off to find some food! We are a good 2-3 miles from any eating establishment, so top priority was heading out for some food!

We found that our road dead-ended directly on the longest (and most beautiful according to locals) of the Jeju trails. We decided to head up the trail towards the harbor. Having looked at the map the night before, Ang thought the harbor area included restaurants and coffee shops over-looking the ocean. . . Sounds great! Off we headed! 😊 (We did find sights, but not particularly food . . . We were STARVING by the time we got a decent meal. It mainly consisted of snacks at Paris Baguette but it tasted like Heaven). 😂🤣😂

Oh my word. . . the view! Every corner we saw some other just eye-catching sight. Didn’t know where to look — inland towards the palms and rising pensions along the coast with the birds and flowers surrounding, down the cliff-marked embankments at the crashing waves and black jutting rocks rising from the water, or outward towards the far blue ocean. Blue. . . it was so blue! Like the movies and books and all those things they say about the deep blue sea. It had greens, aqua, teals. . . like a Lisa Frank art piece.

Flowers

We even found some strange, but gorgeously hued blue berries. . . They hide in this bushy grass that stays curled low to the ground.

Birds

The pigeon here was trying (and succeeding) at disguising himself as a rather large pine cone. . . scared us when he moved out of the corner of our eye 😂🤣

Coffee Shop

Apparently the trail is under construction because they detoured hikers straight through the garden of this rather well-positioned coffee shop. Of course we had to pause for the cause and enjoy a cup of coffee on the terrace!