Date: 12/26/2010
We had planned to go to Loveland that afternoon, but it was too snowy. Loveland is basically in the middle of the island, next to Hallasan--and the roads were too treacherous for our bus to traverse. So we went to a botanical garden instead. I don't remember the name of the garden, but it had some cool lava tubes. Basically I remember three things:
1. Getting lost in the cactus garden:
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| Which way is out!!???!! |
2. Random Iguana Fight
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| Count the Iguanas: 1, 2, 3, 4! Were all vying for the branch closest to the heat lamp. They were not very happy. It was the most random thing.... |
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| The Loser: not a happy camper. He ended up getting revenge though, by biting the tails of his fellow iguanas until he was back up near the top. |
3. The Lava Tubes.
The following is a quote from the entrance of the lava tube:
"Ssangong Cave: Korean Natural Monument No. 236.
Here is Ssangyong cave. Ssangyong means two dragons. This cave is shaped like two dragons. This cave was formed by the eruption of Mt Hall about 2.5 million years ago. his is the only in the world where lava cave and limestone caves are joined together. We can find stalagmites and stalactites in the cave, which aren't grow in a lava cave. Rain has melted broken shells covering the cave area and formed limewater. This limewater has filtered into the cave and has transformed the black lava cave into golden limestone cave. Lava shelves show the path of ancient lava flows. Fossilized sea shells including abalone were found in the cave, leading many to believe the cave was under sea when it was formed long ago. According t a survey of this are in 1986, the lava cave system surrounding the area consists of 20 caves, 17,000 meters long."
So, after typing that, I appears that I walked through a pretty cool cave. There were signed pointing the "two Dragons" ...and you could imagine two dragons--roughly. It was bit of a stretch to me, but if it made them happy, sure. Twin Dragon Cave. Yep. Sure.
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| Walking into the cave. |
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| The cave |
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| This was a "living rock." It had fallen from the ceiling a long LONG time ago and now, due to the dripping water, was slowly "growing." If you looked at the hole in the ceiling, it was shrinking, due to the dripping water (limestone formation) and the rock on the floor was growing. It also had mini-corals growing in the pond on the top of the rock (the calcium in the water was forming a microcolony.) |
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| This is a Korea thing. Of course there are christmas trees and a merry Christmas display in the bellow of the twin dragons lava cave. |
That basically concludes Day 2 of the trip. Our trip consisted of 2 groups (a 2 day group and a 3 day group). After this botanical garden, we dropped the 2 day group people off, and then headed out for dinner. Traditional Korean food. We got back to the hotel and pretty much crashed. Well, my room stayed up talking for a good while (it felt like the first day of camp, all the girls sitting in their beds and sharing stories). I could only stay up for a little while though, because I'm pretty I was the first to fall asleep. I think I tried to be sneaky about it--but no. I just feel asleep in front of my 3 roommates.
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