Jeju-do, Day 4: The Day that Dreams Came True

I am afraid that I've watched Roman Holiday one too many times as a child.  I always have had this fantasy of exploring a new city seated on the back of a scooter - running over sidewalk cafes and Italian women with their daily baguettes.  While my fourth day on Jeju-do involved fewer policeman than Audrey's Roman jaunt, I got to cross "terrorize a city on the back of a scooter" off of my bucket list!  I don't think I stopped smiling all entire day.  

Off the east coast of Jeju-do is U-do ("Cow Island," named thus because its shape resembles a cow), a tiny island featuring white, red, and black beaches, lots of seafood, and bucolic communities.  After a lovely lazy morning, Philip, Max, Gerchie, and I took a noon ferry bound for U-do.

Upon arrival, we immediately set out to accomplish a goal that had been talked about since the inception of the Jeju-do holiday idea - we were going to rent scooters!  Being a beginner at this whole driving-a-tiny-motorized-vehicle thing, I convinced Philip to share a scooter with me.  And, after a little bit of haggling, we secured three scooters for five hours for 33,000 won a piece.  And we even got some sexy helmets.  We'd heard horror stories about the difficulties of renting a scooter - the paperwork, insurance, driving identification, etc. - but we just handed over the money and a single form of ID for each vehicle.  We hopped on our scooters and began to drive on the tiny road meandering along the coast.  And that's when I fell in love.

I felt like I was flying. Philip was a good enough driver (or so it seemed to me!) that I could just sit back and enjoy the ride without worrying (too much) that I was going to die.  And so we were speeding along a tiny road with green grass and a stone wall on one side and black volcanic rocks leading to a cerulean sea on the other side.  And we were going so fast, but we were so exposed to the sun and the wind.  And it felt like flying.  And everything was so beautiful.

Then they got this brilliant idea to let ME try to drive it!  I was pretty uncertain about my driving skills, having some problems biking on busy city streets, but I am never one to pass up an exciting opportunity!  Max has a motorcycle of his own back in Austria so, when Philip couldn't figure out how to turn on our scooter, Max hopped on the back of mine and tried to teach me! 

I got off to a slightly rocky start, not quite mastering the idea of twisting the handle s l o w l y when I wanted to start.  But, thanks to Max's patience and a bit of time, I began to get the hang of it.  And then they let me drive on my own.

So there I was.  On an island off of an island off of the south of South Korea. Living the dream.  And having way too much fun.  The feeling was incredible.  The scenery was incredible.  And I just fell in love with U-do and my little orange scooter.  The picture below gives you an idea of the homes covering U-do.  Each roof is painted a vibrant color and each house is surrounded by a stone wall.  On the other side of me was the sea.

Eventually, Philip even trusted me enough to get back on our scooter.  And,  I am very proud to say, I didn't kill anyone!  I may have run into the middle of the street when I was unable to make a sharp turn... but that's neither here nor there!

Of course, Philip kept telling me what a good driver I was.  Unfortunately for him, there are pictures that prove he thought otherwise of my driving skills!




He's just glad he survived. :)

We spent most of the day biking around from beach to beach.  The island was quite small and could be circled in only an hour or two, but we took our time.  We stopped to marvel at a lighthouse; to swim at the most gorgeous seaweed-filled, sunny, white-sand lagoon that I've ever seen; to eat island specialties of black-skinned pig and seafood rice colored black with squid ink; to swing next to the sea; to pose next to the island sign (see below - it says U-do in Korean!); to walk on a white coral beach; and to eat frozen yogurt. And I was happy happy happy.

 

 

After a very long, very sun-filled, very happy day, we caught the last (or next-to-last - we weren't quite sure!) ferry off of the island at 5:00 PM.  To top off the absolute perfection of the day, our ferry ride home was graced by a double rainbow!  While we were looking at the two complete rainbows, a Korean girl came up and asked where we were from. I replied "Miguk saram ee-ae-yo" (I am an American person!), and she asked to take a picture with us!  So Philip, a double rainbow, and I were immortalized in the film of a very excited Korean girl.

Sweaty, tired, and utterly happy, we finished the day by hiking up Sunrise Peak for the sunset. We toasted each other and our adventures, and I watched the sun go down on a perfect day.