Ulleungdo Island – Part 3/3

Ulleungdo Island is an up and coming tourist location but it will never be the quintessential “island get-away” type of place. This island is rugged, rustic, and a step back in time. The villages are small and old, the roads are narrow, the people are friendly and helpful, and the scenery is unchanged and amazing. There is one resort on the island (Ulleung Resort Daea), a few hotels, lots of inns, and many places where you can do a home-stay. There are enough things to do and see on the island to keep you busy for a few days. Our original goal for the trip was to do some serious hiking but the weather didn’t cooperate. We still had an amazing trip exploring the island by car!

We found this garden when we took a wrong turn looking for our hotel. We returned the next day and walked around. I can’t find any information about this garden on the internet or in our guidebooks so I don’t know what it’s called. There was a small entrance fee to go into this garden. It was well-kept and had many sculptures, bonsai trees, and plants. There was a wooden staircase that went up the side of the mountain, past a waterfall, to a lookout point with nice views.

We came upon the village with the Taehahyangmok Tourist Monorail by chance while driving around exploring. There was a long line at the monorail station and our guidebooks didn’t say much about it so we didn’t ride it. According to the Official Site of Korea Tourism, the monorail supposedly takes you to the best vista point on the island. Oops 🙂 Next to the monorail is a large orange spiral ramp/staircase that leads to a relatively flat walkway along the volcanic coastline.

You can take the newer spiral ramp (we did on the way up)…

…or the old ramp precariously attached to the cliffside (we did on the way down).

This walkway had some great views of the volcanic coastline

Bongnae Falls is a three-level waterfall that is 82 feet high and apparently the only source of drinking water on the island. We hiked to the waterfall and met a small group of Korean tourists there. They took a picture for us, we took a picture for them, and then they all wanted individual pictures with us 🙂

The Naribunji Basin is the crater of the island’s volcano and is the largest flat area on the island. It is very fertile volcanic ash soil which is used for farming. The road getting to it is very steep, curvy, and narrow. There really isn’t anything there other than a lot of farmland, a few houses, and a restaurant or two but it was worth the visit just to say we drove around in the crater of a volcano 🙂

The Haengnam Shore Walkway is a must do on the island. We took a walk on it just because we had some time to spare and it’s next to the ferry terminal but we were both impressed with it. This walkway is built into the side of the steep hillside and gives you an up close look at the volcanic rock and crashing surf on either side of you. Parts of the walkway are a metal grate that are a little slick when wet but very neat to see the water beneath you.

Ulleungdo Island is known for the exceptional quality of cuttlefish (a squid-type creature) and pumpkin. We did not try the cuttlefish but we did buy some pumpkin taffy and ate some pumpkin pizza!

Cuttlefish hung out to dry