On a three day weekend in early June, a friend and I decided to visit Dadohaehaesang National Park. Dadohaehaesang is the largest national park in Korea with most of it being a marine area. Since it covers such a large area of southwest Korea, you can get there from multiple ways. We chose to stay in Yeosu and go to the park from there.
Our original plan was to take a bus to Yeosu on Friday night after school, then stay there for two nights before heading back to Gwangju. However, after school on Friday I received an email from our accommodation saying there’d been a mix-up with the site we booked and they didn’t have a room for us on Saturday night. Luckily, they still had a room for us on Friday so we decided to still go so we could hike. In hindsight, this actually worked out much better because it ended up raining on Sunday and we wouldn’t have been able to do much anyway.
We took the two hour bus to Yeosu and arrived at our hostel around 9 o’clock. We had a chill night since we had to wake up early for our hike in the morning. The next morning we woke up around 6: 30 a.m. to go to Geumodo island where we would be hiking. To get to Geumodo island, we had to take an hour bus to the Singi Port Ferry Terminal where we would then take a 30 minute ferry to Geumodo island. The bus ride was very pretty; it took us along the coast and through some rural parts of a nearby island called Dolsan.
When we arrived at our stop, it was a mad rush to the ferry terminal. The ferry was leaving at 9:10 and we got to the ticket office at 9:00. It was chaos inside the ticket office; there were multiple lines, people were yelling, and then randomly people from the back of the line would be let up to the front. We had no idea which line to get in so we just chose the shortest. Luckily, there were some very nice Koreans who helped us out and pushed us to the front of the line when they realized we only wanted passenger tickets and not car tickets. This explained what all the shouting and cutting in line was about. Once we got our tickets we sprinted to the ferry and were the last people let onboard before they left for the island. Talk about good timing :)
The ferry ride was really nice! It only took about 30 minutes which was the perfect amount of time to enjoy the ocean views and the surrounding islands as we went past.
When we arrived at the port on Geumodo we were a little lost on what our next mode of transportation would be in order to get to the trailhead. We first tried to find a bus stop, but then realized it wasn’t where it said it would be. Walking was out of the question since the road seemed to be very narrow and windy, so a taxi it was. However, we were on a very rural island so taxis were hard to find. Luckily, a very nice man working at the tourist desk at the ticket office saw us struggling and called a taxi for us. By 10:15, we were at the trailhead!
The trail we hiked was called the Bireonggil Trail. It goes all along one side of the island and is split into five courses each differing in lengths. The total length of the trail was around 18 km (11 miles). Since we had to consider making it back in time to catch the ferry and then later the bus back to Gwangju, we only hiked the first two courses; but, the distance of those two courses was around 9 km (5.5 miles) so we were able to hike around half of the trail.
This hike was unlike any hike I’ve done in Korea thus far. It was along the coast which meant we had a view of the ocean for the majority of the hike. The water was such a beautiful shade of blue and we had great sunny weather to enjoy the hike.
The first course took us around an hour and a half to complete. While on this course we passed a few overlooks that were stunning!
The course ended in a small village where we stopped to eat a snack.
Then we carried on our way to the second course. This course was more wooded which provided some much needed shade. It also only took about an hour and half to complete and when we were done we ended in another village. At this point we were getting hungry for lunch, but we weren’t able to find anything to eat. Due to some poor planning on our part, we’d only brought a few snacks so we decided at this point it was probably best to head back to the ferry as we didn’t know exactly what Course 3 would be like.
We asked a shop owner to call a taxi for us and then we had a crazy taxi ride back to the port. Due to a misunderstanding on my part our taxi driver thought we were trying to make it to the ferry that was departing in like 15 minutes so he was zooming down some very windy roads. He did a good job though because we made it just in time:)
The rest of the day was spent eating lunch and hanging out around Yeosu. Although it ended up being a shorter trip than planned, it was a fun one and I really enjoyed hiking at Geumodo island. I am very thankful for all the kind people we met who helped us at the ferry ports and called the taxi drivers; we wouldn’t have been able to enjoy the trip without them. If I were ever to go back to Geumodo, I would definitely hike the entire 5 courses and then stay overnight at a campsite in order to fully experience the island. But, with the limited time we had, this was the perfect trip for us!
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