Green Tea and MORE Green Tea

Taken from a trail opposite the tea plantation we came for... tee hee

With our extended vacation, we planned on visiting Seoul for the first time. However, those plans fell through and we had to find something else to do here in lovely Gwangju.

Thanks to this week being full of Holidays (May 5th was Children's Day and May 10th is Buddha's Birthday), we were given some time off from our jobs. We only had one work day which many people referred to as a sandwich day since Friday was packed in between days off.

With all this said, we had to make something out of our rare holiday and decided to go to Boseong for its Green Tea Festival. Boseong is apparently the perfect place for Green Tea to grow - according to the pamphlet given to us as we entered the plantation.

Piney.

 This is part of the beautiful array of trees we encountered as we walked into the plantation. The man who established this field planted around 3 million trees here as a "shelterbelt". This tea plantation is known as Daehon Dawon and honestly, it's beautiful. 

I need a duffle bag for my stash of Green Tea. 

But it kept going. Yes, there were these amazing views throughout the whole place but something kept telling me that we had to keep going up. Luckily, we had a path and people to follow. The first picture at the top was from the trail we took by mistake. We had to climbing a pretty large staircase to get there as well so that was discouraging. Digression!


Anyway, we kept moving after taking some pictures. 

Keep moving!

So we kept moving towards the top. In case I didn't show that part yet, here's what we were trying to climb. 

I never felt so high.

Of course this isn't the highest peak in Korea but to me (out of shape), I felt like this was Mt. Everest. This experience truly woke me up as to what needs to happen. I need to do this stuff more because it may have been a grueling experience but truly worth it. I was too tired to take pictures at the top but trust me, it was rough. Here are some pics from the top. 

So High.

Behind those mountains is Deukryang Bay. Something says we'll be back here.

Personally, the tea plantation is far prettier from below than above. From the looks of the tourist pamphlet, there's loads to do around Boseong. Anybody wanting a good day-trip should travel to this area because it's serves a great example as one of Korea's many beautiful places. 


-Carl

Location:Pungam-dong,Gwangju,South Korea