We had our first of four day trips out of Seoul on Day 10, and this triptoday included three places in the Gangwon province. That we were on the road for almost six hours in all is an illustration of how big the province is though: it took 1 hr 45 minutes for us to get from Seoul to the first place – Alpaca World, another 1.5 hours to get to Nami Island, another hour to get to Garden of Morning Calm, and finally 1.5 hours to get back to Seoul.
That and also that we’d opted to visit the Garden in the evening to see the Christmas illuminations meant that we were going to depart only mid-morning – our pick-up time was 9:45AM at Myeongdong station . This resulted in a tour that only gave us that little time at each place. That was probably the biggest issue we had with this trip: we were hustling from place to place and never really had the time to do all but the most cursory explorations of each place. In this and the next two posts, I’ll note the amount of time you’d want to actually spend in the park, and what we had in reality.
Our first stop was Alpaca World, about 1 hr 45 minutes by tour coach from Seoul.The park is one of the city’s popular tourist attractions on account of the one highlight that is perhaps unusual: the sheer number of alpacas in the park – 50 from what I read – and that you can actually mingle with them in a fairly large enclosure called the Alpaca Playground. In this playground, there would be free-roaming alpacas all hungry for food, and visitors can buy up cups of feed from the dispenser machines nearby, and interact with with these admittedly cute mammals. These fellows are also extremely hungry, and can smell feed and will zoom into you if you’ve got some.
Pro-tip: to stretch the money you’re going to inevitably spend on feed, do not use the cup to directly feed the alpacas. They will very greedily devour everything in it in seconds! Rather, designate someone in your group to be the cup holder, and have that person pour out a small amount into another’s hand, and the latter can feed the animals. Take turns as you need. The reason why I suggest this approach is because it’s very easy to get distracted if you hold the cup of feed in one hand, and your other hand is the feeding hand: you’d have alpacas approach you from behind and gobble everything you have in your cup hand before you know it! I also suggest you don’t buy too much feed at a time too, as it reduces the risk of mishap of having just one alpaca jump you and devour everything in the cup LOL.
There are also other animals in the park – and they include rabbits, peacocks, goats, chipmunks, and very cute capybaras – but you won’t be able to interact with them for the most part, excepting the rabbits which are in an enclosure that you can’t access and you feed through small feeding tubes. Honestly though, visitors are really here for just one reason: the alpacas, so that’s where most visitors will spend their time.
The park sits on a mountain, though keep in mind that most mountains in Korea are actually hills. The drive up was relatively easy, and we got to the park just before noon and were given about an hour 10 minutes to visit. I reckon visitors will want to spend at least an hour and a half minimally, and about 2 hours if you’d like to at least spend a bit of time at every enclosure. Also, the iconic picture seen in park brochure of the herd of alpacas running about: that is the 10:10AM performance called the ‘A Pack of Alpacas’, which we missed as we only arrived at noon.
All in, this was a fun experience on account that we normally don’t get to interact with more than one or two of these very cute animals at a time. So, go for it!
Our next place was Nami Island with time for lunch. Continued in the next post!