DAY 4 (27th September 2023) – JEJU ISLAND (Hallasan National Park & Manjanggul Lava Tube)
Going to the Hallasan National Park, situated right smack in the centre of Jeju Island, is a must. The park has several entrances, and depending on what you want to see or what you want to do, you can choose which entrance to use. Hallasan Mountain, the tallest mountain in the whole of South Korea, sits high in the middle of the park, and is a shield volcano, i.e. resembling a shield that’s lying on the ground.
Initially, we had plans only to visit this park, but when we both decided that there was no way we could walk all the way to the top, we decided to look for alternative things to do, and we discovered the Manjanggul Lava Tube, the world’s 12th longest lava tube, but considered one of the world’s finest specimen, due to its relative stability and accessibility for scientists to study it.
So, we covered only these two places on this day.
Hallasan National Park
We arrived at the main park entrance at around 9:30am, and although it was a very sunny day, there were few people around, which was a genuine surprise. Or maybe most of the locals enter the park through the other entrances. Anyway, we felt that we had the whole park to ourselves, except for a handful of other visitors. There are altogether seven main trails in the park, most of them leading to or near the top of Hallasan Mountain, which stands at an elevation of 1,950m.
The Eorimok Trail starts at the Visitor Centre, and is a 6-hr round-trip trek but will only get us mid-way up the mountain. Only the Seongpanak Trail (from the east) and Gwaneumsa Trail (from the north) gets you to the rim of the volcanic crater. Both these trails are said to be challenging and take more than 8 hours to complete. Hallasan Mountain, by definition, is considered an active volcano, even though it hasn’t erupted in more than a thousand years.
The trees provided a canopy over the first parts of the trail. The trail itself is mostly manmade, starting with a brick path, before gradually changing to wooden steps and then wooden platforms once we got out of the treeline. Although there were some people at the visitor centre, once we started the hike, we were the only ones on the trail. The only other people we met along the way were the workers who were maintaining the park. And I must say, they are doing a great job (Bro Ray: Kudos!).
There were stops along the way, where we could fill our bottles with natural spring water and also places to rest before the uphill hike ahead. It didn’t look even remotely like the weather was going to turn bad, as the sun was beating down on us as we trudged our way along the wide wooden platforms that stretched as far as the eye could see, with the view of Hallasan Mountain almost always ahead of us. It was a pleasant walk, but alas, we came to a point along the trail and decided that we didn’t want to go on. So, we turned back and headed back to the car.
We finally got to see the outer rim of the crater, named Baengnokdam from quite a distance away, and although we reached to where Eorimok Trail meets the Yeongsil Trail, we decided to call off walking any further. We had run out of water by then, and we thought that our pace was too slow to make it further up and then head all the way back down. So, we bade our farewells to Mount Hallasan, and retraced our steps.
Manjanggul Lava Tube
From the visitor centre at the Eorimok Trail, it was an hour’s drive to the northeast of the island, to the entrance of the Manjanggul Lava Tube Cave. Although it is almost 9km in total length, only the first 1km from the entrance of the cave is open to the public for safety reasons. Although the walls and ceilings have been pretty stable over the years, with its multi-layered walls showcasing the many times volcanic lava passed through the tube, some portions may be volatile, especially after being exposed to the environs over the years.
The entire lava tube cave system has been given the UNESCO World Natural Heritage status, and inside, there is a lava column formation standing at over 7.6m, which is the tallest lava column in the world. The entire walkable portion of the lava cave is pretty cool and well-lit. Some portions of the “tube” are as wide as 23m and as high as 30m. There are no cave offshoots or detours, hence it would be impossible to get lost in this place!
We drove back into Jeju Island’s main city and had dinner at one of the famous food centres, where there were various stalls selling different foods to suit the different palates. The variety there made choosing difficult – all looked delicious! In the end, we settled for these:
Summary of Day 4
Since we were on our final day on Jeju Island before we headed back to Seoul, we spent the night at a hotel nearer to the airport. Overall, it was a pretty satisfactory day – the visit to Hallasan National Park was planned (Bro Ray: although we could have planned things even better, to be honest) but the visit to the Manjanggul Lava Tube was unexpected. Sometimes, it’s the unexpected experiences that we will remember the most. Unfortunately, overall, I believe we probably missed a whole lot more about Jeju Island, and we must return here in another time. There is a gnawing feeling that we still did not complete our adventure here.
