Ullengdo Island Part 2

The Mysterious Island Adventures Continue. . .

Megan and I boarded a bus full of other tourists, most all of them foreign, college-grad, English teachers like myself. We took a tour around the island for 4 hours, stopping to see giant rock formations, Buddhist temples, scenic outlooks, and Ullengdo’s other small fish towns. Looking out at the coast line was best part of the tour, because the line between the water and sky was blurred; the misty air on this island gave the illusion of an ocean that reached to the sky, or a sky that spanned to the bottom of the earth, whichever way you looked at it. This is why the island is fondly called Mysterious Island Ullengdo. It’s more of an Island up in the clouds, far removed from the water. We stopped at a small town up in the mountains and tried some homemade rice wine. It was good if you like essence of dirty sock soaking in dish water and the color of grey fog.

We came back to the hotel for a dinner of fried fish (naturally) and other typical Korean foods of yellow bean sprouts, sticky rice, Kimchee, and pressed green seaweed that is cut in perfect little rectangles the size of index cards, all stacked in a dish. To the Westerner, seeing a stack of dark green pieces of crepe paper may look a bit vile. But if you have the taste for sushi, the fresh salted taste of these seaweed squares wrapped around rice is delicious, and I must have eaten enough of it to grow a pair of gills. Megan and I headed back to the bed-less hotel room with the two left foot shoes and slept that night on the floor with a pillow stuffed with beans, and not being sarcastic, I slept like a baby.

The next day after a breakfast of more fish, rice, seaweed and kimchee, (Koreans don’t differentiate between breakfast foods and other foods) Megan and I got on another boat headed to Dokdo Island, that infamous island between Korean and Japan that has both countries fighting over its ownership to this day. Ullengdo Island even have a museum full of papers and artifacts that adds to Korea’s argument over why it should be and always was, belonging to Korea.

It was another peaceful boat ride to the Island, all 2 hours of it, and when we finally arrived, we had to do our best to enjoy it because we were only given 7 minutes. The rock formations were cool, huge arches of golden-brown stone that looked more like Thailand than Korea/Japan. I still don’t know which country has legal ownership of it. I was given different answers when I inquired about it. Megan and I took some pictures and some souvenir rocks, and then we were herded back on the boat. Why Korea and Japan fight over this island is beyond me, unless there’s some great fortune to be had in the brown rock industry. People in Ullengdo wore shirts with a picture of Dokdo on it that said “Dokdo Rocks!” (gaffaw, I had to say it!)

I wish I could say the boat ride back to the island was as peaceful as it was getting to Dokdo, but this time we sailed into the wind, and the waves had pickup and tossed the ship up and down in pounding lashes. This dident sit well for a number of people on the ship and the bathroom and a steady stream of users. I just turned up my ipod and fell asleep.

Back on Ullengdo, the next activity on the list was either hiking or swimming. I knew exactly what I wanted to do, coming from a family of swimmers, and I grabbed my suit and goggles and followed the trail that I had hiked on the previous day, the one that wraps around the coast with stairs and bridges going every which way. Megan and I were some of the first swimmers there, and we had to figure out the best way to get in the water because it was pure rock, and it wasn’t very forgiving rock for that matter; the sea hadn’t smoothed out the rock’s sharp volcanic edges. Some former Ullengdo tourists nearby told us to jump off the bridge that spanned a wide part of the bay and climb out near a patch of low-laying rocks. I seemed a bit apprehensive at first, but the clear water showed that it was at least 20 feet to the bottom until any rocks were in the way. I climbed under the bridge railings and looked straight below into the blue abyss. The bridge was at least a meter higher than a high dive, and remembering that I was a pole vaulter and already missing a few screws when it came to athletic judgment, took the plunge. I was rewarded with a refreshing burst of cool, clear ocean water that seemed to hug me, and after Megan tossed my goggles to me from the bridge, I explored the sea world beneath me.

It was pure, unbelievable bliss. It was so warm, it was like a bathtub, but so clear you could see far out into the ocean away from the shore. The rock formations on Ullengdo were stunning, and it was only the beginning compared to what was under the ocean’s surface. The sea had carved out inlets in these rock formations, with arches and gulley’s that belonged to a Greek temple. The blueness of the water contrasting with the sun’s light as it went through the water only made it more surreal. Me, Megan, and a number of the other tourists swam for hours, jumping off the bridge, floating around, and taking underwater pictures. I wished my family was here more than anything; we would have already swum across the bay and back by now. There wasn’t an abundance of fish to look at, but you swam deep under the rock ledges, you could find plenty of angel fish and neon-blue beta. There was, however, a ton of black sea urchins sitting idly inside the rock crevasses, and it made getting out of the water more of a scare. They look like they want to shoot their quills out and stab an unfortunate swimmer. Course, I can be bias.

The one thing to really be scared of are the jelly fish. And I don’t mean the clear, dinner-plate size ones, (although these do have a nasty sting,) I mean the largest freakin’ jelly fish known to man. It all started when some tourists standing on the rocks near the swimming spot were pointing and shrieking at the water. It was then that I climbed out and saw a pink jelly fish at least 3 feet in diameter waving its stinging tentacles all over. We watched if for a while as it made its way toward our swimming spot, and by then most swimmers had gotten out after the Tourist Staff alerted everyone. I noticed how slowly the jellyfish swam, and feeling a bit daring, borrowed an underwater camera and jumped in to get pictures. I kept a safe distance! It was worth it, see? It looked even larger underwater, but this time it looked beautiful, and not like a shapeless pink blog of death. We were all done swimming by then, because it was dusk and it was also the time all the giant jelly fish swim near shore. Within an hour we could 7 huge jellys making their way along the shoreline. I could really appreciate them after getting so close to one underwater.

After dinner at the hotel, my friend and I walked around the town, enjoying the relaxing small town feel and visiting the fish market. We tried raw tuna that was killed 5 minutes ago, a Korean specialty on these islands and coast towns. It was rather tasty. All the squid boats that we had seen earlier docked in the bay where all out fishing for squid, and you could see them easy even when they were way off in the distance because of the string of bright lights strung at the top of the boats. The squid are attracted to the light and they swim to shore and are then caught by net. The fog off the ocean made the bright lights of the boats look like orbs of yellow floating out in the distance.
It was another perfect night of walking the lit coast trail, looking for crabs and playing the Pirates of the Caribbean theme song out loud from my ipod. . . just because it was that fitting.

The squid boats fishing with their lights at night