Summer in Korea (Part 4) - Jeju Island

25th Wedding Anniversary - We celebrated a little late (3 months) but it was worth the wait!!

Jeju Island is just off the south coast of Korea, and a popular holiday spot for Koreans.  Lots of people honeymoon there (so we raised the average age of the tourists considerably!), and it really is a lovely place.  The island is 75km east to west and 40km north to south - small enough to get around in a couple of days at a very leisurely pace.

A highlight of the island was the Manjanggul Lava Cave, part of an extensive network of lava tubes on Jeju, and the only one that the public is allowed to walk through.  It was very impressive, and also cool enough to provide welcome relief from the summer heat and humidity outside.

The coastline of Jeju is very pretty. Because it is a volcanic island there is a LOT of black volcanic rock around - along the coast, and also around the farms.  We saw many rock walls around small crops, and wondered if there is just so much rock that the farmers don't know what else to do with it!!!!

 There were some white sandy beaches, some black sand beaches and many areas of black rock 'beaches'.  The water was a beautiful blue/aqua colour in some places, reminding me of the water in The Whitsundays (just not as nice for as far, and without the beautiful long beaches).  We managed to find many places with great views!

...and some interesting stone statues.....

We even had a little bit of time with our new friend, Negussie, a scientist from Tanzania who was attending a conference with Russ the following week, on Jeju (it's a tough life for these guys!!!)

A lovely way to start and end our long weekend was at each airport - Gimpo and Jeju.  After the plane was pushed out, the ground staff who had driven/walked out with the aircraft waited, and as the plane started to taxi out, they waved us off - very cute!!