Jeju Island Day 2 Part 2: Lava Caves and Hedge Maze

The next stop was a series of lava tubes, which were actually back towards Jeju City but I wasn't able to get to them the day before due to lack of daylight. First was Gimnyeongsagul, or Snake Cave, which is technically closed, but there was a well worn path around the edge of the chainlink fence, and even Lonely Planet says to ignore the closure. It is a double decker lava tube with a layer of stone between the two tubes stacked on top of each other. I only walked into the entrance since I somehow went on the trip without a flashlight, but it was cool to wander into this overgrown entrance down worn stone steps into an open cave with no one around and obvious signs of disuse. I then went on a couple kilometers down the tree lined road to Gimnyeong hedge maze, which was created by an immigrant from Washington state and is full of symbolism about Jeju, starting with its shape being like the shape of the island. Surprisingly it was actually a challenge, unlike most mazes. It ended with a raised platform from which you could look over what you had navigated through, and where you could ring a bell to tell everyone of your accomplishment. You could also help (or 'help') those below with shouted directions. Right next to the maze was Manjanggul cave, the longest system of lave tubes in the world totaling 13.4 kilometers. I only walked the open part, one kilometer of it and back. The tube itself was about twenty feet tall, though it was also doubled at some points and so twice that height. There were also areas where the roof had partially caved in that were huge chambers. There were occasional odd formations such as ridges along the walls and dripping stone of solidified magma, but the really impressive element was the sheer tunnel itself. It was a half circle of open space with the other half filled by a floor composed of a river of stone frozen in place. Sometimes rocks fell from the ceiling and drifted along the lava. One such drifting rock is said to look like a turtle, or perhaps like the island of Jeju itself, and was eerily pretty in any case. The path through the tunnel ended at the world's largest known lava column, where the lava solidified as it fell from one layer of the tube to another.