Muuido and Hongdo

In the past month I've been to two beautiful islands, Muuido and Hongdo. Hongdo is the more recent and more impressive, so I'll talk about that more. First, though, a brief word about Muuido. We joined one of the hiking clubs Sandra's a member of for a day of hiking on the Monday after the Seollal holiday, which I mentioned in my previous posting. It was less than a 10-minute ferry ride from the mainland (actually a largish island connected with the mainland by a bridge) to Muuido, and when we arrived we immediately began a 4 or 5-hour hike with plenty of views of the ocean and snowy hillsides all around us. One of the most memorable parts of the hike for me was the lunch we had at the top of one of the hills. As usual, and as everything, it was done communally. People (previously unknown to me) handed me bulgogi (thin-sliced Korean bbq) and soup, and others laid out rice and panchan (side dishes) in the middle. A few people were using backpacking stoves to cook the bulgogi, ramen, etc. So I took the tuna bagel-sandwich I had prepared, along with the kiwi, cut them into pieces and laid them out for everyone. The other memorable event was the meal we shared at a ramshackle-looking restaurant near the harbor, upon our return from the hike. It consisted of oysters, clams, conchs and other shells, which were caught fresh and cleaned; these were then simply tossed on hot charcoal grills built into the center of each table. As the shells heated up the meat inside would cook and expand, forcing the shells to open, sometimes very suddenly. (On a few occasions one of the shells popped open, shooting out a bit of steaming liquid.) We ate the meat straight from the shells, simply dipped in a spicy sauce.

Hongdo took our island explorations to the next level. We left on Saturday afternoon and returned Monday (March 1st, Korean Independence Movement Day). It took 4.5 hours to drive to Mokpo, a coastal city in the far southwest, and then (on Saturday morning) 2.5 hours on a high-powered boat with a capacity of several hundred. (this was no ten-minute ferry ride, but a real seagoing vessel: Hongdo is maybe 150 kilometers from the mainland, going toward China.) We drove down in Sandra's sister's car, a Daewoo equipped with the usual high-speed GPS-radio-TV rolled into one you see in many cars here. In Mokpo we joined a tour group, which is the way sightseeing is usually done here. It was about USD $125 apiece for the round-trip boat ride, 3 meals, and a hotel on Heuksando, an island halfway between Hongdo and Mokpo. As for Hongdo, I think my pictures will do better to convey the stark beauty of the scenery there. But basically we did a short hike, on our own, then met up with the group for a boat tour around the island to check out some of the most impressive ocean rocks I have ever seen. The tour guide was entertaining, and would have been even more so, I am sure, could I have understood the many jokes and anecdotes he was, no doubt, rattling off. After Hongdo we boarded another ocean vessel for Heuksando, where we took a bus tour of that island before finally settling down for the night. That night (Sunday) the weather took a turn for the worse. The wind picked up mightily and by morning it had died down but there were grey skies and a misty rain. The sea had also been stirred, and the boat ride back to the mainland was quite the gut-wrenching journey. Imagine riding on one of those amusement-park pirate ships (the ones that swing back and forth in a huge arc) for two hours straight--only instead of swinging freely, imagine that each time it reaches the bottom of the arc it crashes into a huge wave, and all the passengers lurch to the side of their seats and try not to pay attention to the food channel that the boat crew has unwisely (sadistically?) decided to put up on the large screen in front of us. But we made it back, though it took us a few hours walking around Mokpo's small but worthwhile natural history museum to work up an appetite for lunch. The drive back is hardly worth mentioning, so now you have the whole story! I hope you enjoyed it.