Chusok - the biggest holiday in Korea!

Chusok is Korea's biggest holiday and it is comparable to our Thanksgiving. 4 of my friends and I went to an island off of the East coast of S.Korea for this long weekend holiday. It is an extinct volcanic island and it's landscape is dramatic and beautiful.

The ride out was on a bumpy passenger ferry, after an all night bus ride to the coast. The ferry had to go over 2 meter waves and this did not happen without incident. Dan, Mike, Michelle and I all took travel pills and either relaxed or slept most of the way and when I finally got up to go to the bathroom, I found our friend Linda and about 20 other people laid out in the galley and bathrooms moaning and puking into little blue bags. But none moaned as much as what I referred to as The Banshee! She was in the girls bathroom, on the floor, with a bag full of puke moaning like I have never heard before... it freaked me out as I sat there peeing. "Ahhhhh... Moaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa .... eeeeeeeeeeiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii...." etc. Anyways, poor Linda spent her 4 hour ride surrounded in this. One would start to hurl and they'd all be hurling. All with the Banshee calling out to them in the distance. Anyways, here are some pics from the trip


The gang- L to R - Me, Dan, Linda, Mike and Michelle. We were at the ferry port.

A cool looking rock face. The water is actually really bright greeny blue, but my pics didn't capture it.
They call this "Elephant Rock", do you know why?

This tree was pretty rad, and it was still alive!! We saw this on a big hike that we did.

We had fun with the giant reflection pics for a bit. I think it's neat.

I went bridge jumping. It doesn't look very far down, but it sure felt like it was. I was scared...heart pounding. But the water was nice and I was happy that I did it, after it was done.

Pretty view... of the landscape I mean, ;)

I thought this rock looked like an animal howling at the moon... cool, hey?

A shot from the ferry of the town we stayed in.

A sculpture we came across, nestled in the mountains.

Squid fishing boats. They go out at night and turn on their bright lights to attract the squid. At night you can see many lights out at sea and in the morning they come back to the harbor and clean and hang the squid to dry. Squid is the islands main industry.

Hundreds of squid were hanging like this all over the harbor.

Dan and I after a small hike.

We had a lot of fun, as we always do together. We went on a 984 m elevated hike to the top of a mountain, bridge jumping, strolling, we went on a cable car ride, on a tour of the island, we played cards, drank beer, ate some good food, met some nice people (one who had a striking resemblance to Emma Watson... aka Hermione in the Harry Potter movies), needless to say, I kind of secretly stalked her all weekend long... what? I had to!! It was Emma.... oh Emma, where are you now?