Lunar New Year

Well Asia just finished celebrating the Lunar New Year, so I ended up with a 5-day long weekend. I bussed it down to Busan and hopped on a nice short flight (only 50 minutes!!!) to Jeju Island, a huge island (by Korean standards) off the south coast. I knew it wouldn't be hot, but I knew it would be 5 to 10 degrees warmer than my place, which was good enough.
Due to travel time, effectively I had 3 days so my plan was to spend the first two hiking on the Jeju Olle Trails, a system they started to put together a couple of years ago to attract more tourists. They've got almost 20 different routes now, and they're designed so that most of them are connected end to end, allowing you to almost circumnavigate the whole island. Most of the stages take 6 to 8 hours, so that's a lot of hiking. I had no interest in hiking the whole island (nor the time) but I thought it'd be a good way to see some nice scenery.
I started out on the southwest coast at Sanbangsan, a mountain with a temple on the side of it (including laughing Buddha, above) and some kind of shrine in a cave in the middle of it.

At the same temple, I took this picture of these gold wheels, which I think are Tibetan in origin, but I really have no idea.
Heading down from the temple to the Yongmeori Coast gives some amazing views of the sandstone cliffs, and because I got there early, I basically had it to myself. The water was an amazing blue, but unfortunately as it's early February, it's still way too cold to swim in.
I then started hiking on Jeju Olle Trail 9 in the reverse direction (the trails are set up to be walked in a clockwise direction around Jeju). I figured it'd be just as easy as walking in the proper direction, but apparently I was mistaken. The signs are placed where people going the right way will easily see them, so I missed a lot of the markers but I still had a great time. This is one of the beaches I hiked along, looking back towards the Yongmeori Coast, above.
I don't know what kind of bird this is, but there were quite a few of them on the south coast of Jeju. Kind of similar to a robin but with the blue-gray instead (and robins don't usually look like they want to kick my ass).

From the beach I headed inland into the Andeok Valley. I got lost again, and came across this trail that looked quite new, but was overgrown so hadn't been used for a while. It took me down to a nice creek with a little waterfall.

As I got closer to my base in Seogwipo, I was able to take some pictures of snow-covered Hallasan, the highest mountain in South Korea. However it was pretty hazy, so it's difficult to see it behind this rock wall.