Jindo Sea Parting and Buttttttttterfly festival.

안녕하세요! It's been a while since we've been able to take a weekend to travel somewhere we haven't been yet in Korea. This weekend we went with the Adventure Korea tour guide company to the Jindo Sea Parting Festival 진도 신비의바닷길축제 and the Hampyeong Butterfly Festival 함평 나비대축제. A great article about the science behind the Jindo Sea parting and the folk legend that accompanies the parting can be found at the National Geographic website. This article was published the day before we saw the parting so it is quite current. Nat'l Geographic Jindo Sea Parting

     Here is the 'miracle' story that accompanies the sea parting. Taken from Nat'l Geographic.

"According to legend, tigers were once abundant on Jindo Island. But when they began invading local villages, people fled to Modo Island. One woman, Bbyong, was inadvertently left behind.

She prayed to the god of the ocean, Yongwang, every day until finally the god told her in a dream that a rainbow would appear in the sea the next day for her family to cross the ocean.

When she went out to sea, the waters miraculously parted and a rainbow road appeared. Bbyong's family crossed the sea to meet her, and thus began a popular tradition among locals and a mystical attraction among tourists."

Pretty mystical yeah... Here's that statue they were talking about. Also, there are no tigers here... anywhere.

So this was taken a bit before the action started.

You may remember our friends Asami and Kate who accompanied us to Lotte World and Seoul for the lantern festival. They were cool enough to meet up with us and hang out at the Sea Parting.

Ladies be posin'... A THREAT. 

Look at that adorable face... there's a puppy too. 

One of the larger draws of the festival is the annual flying of the whales, pictured below. 

They can't fly very high...

After the flying whales (Why didn't I take pictures??? IDIOT) we put on our fashionable wares.

Yeah those boots were very comfortable... especially walking on the sharp rocks near the shore. 

We then ventured out into the water. 

Our target island. 

Shaina found a starfish!

We had a really awesome time at the Sea Parting and we will definitely be going again if we stay another year. I leave you with a view of the ground that the tide going out revealed.

Our next destination was the Hampyeong Butterfly Festival which is held in the spring about 50km north of Mokpo.










When we arrived we were able to release butterflies along side the local mayor of Hampyeong. Everyone got a little container with some butterflies in it and on the count of three we let them go into NATURE. An interesting experience we had there was getting to make wax hands. The gentleman who made them would dip your hand into ice water then into hot wax going back and forth until you had a nice layer of wax on your hand. Then he would cool it and gently tug it off your hand. It was pretty cool/hot. Also, after our mud fishing incident some Korean dudes asked Shaina to pose for some pics with a barrel of mudfish. She obliged gleefully and many PR photos were taken. She was not compensated monetarily but her self esteem was greatly improved.

Sitting under the tree of power... those are acutally all hanging plants.

Shaina decided to try mud fishing. 

Unfortunately her search was quite futile. 

Mudboy looks for mudfish... makes sense.                                         I required Shaina to give up. She was sad. 

Wax hands are fun. 

Rhinoceros beetle larvae are neat meat.

We got to release some butterflies and here's what that looked like. 

Try and guess what I'm doing here.

My new friend.