Korean Gem: Gwangyang Maehwa Festival

Korea is very proud of its cherry blossom season. Come spring, the entire country is covered in the blossoms and beforehand each area is mapped out on where will bloom first. There are so many locations, some famous, some lesser-known, but you can’t really go wrong with where you end up because they are all beautiful. 

I had come across Gwangyang randomly one day, an area famous for its plum blossoms, and added it to my list to visit. 매화 Maehwa (plum blossom) Village has many plum themed foods and on the mountain is Cheong Maesil Farm where is one of the main highlights of the area. The farm was transformed from a plum orchard of a few thousand to over 100,000 plum trees. The farmer’s wife decided to plant more trees to draw more people to visit, and she certainly succeeded. The thousands of plum blossoms cover the mountainside come spring, and there are many trails throughout the property that lead through to different views. There are plenty of areas to also by maesil ice cream, tea, or jeon~~all very tasty treats.

A mini bamboo forest, small pond, gazebo overlook, and flowers after flowers, it is truly a peaceful and breathtaking location to visit.

My camera couldn’t capture how beautiful it was in person, but I was in love with the view. There were so many flowers and the view of blossoms and mountains and river was truly beautiful. It definitely is one of my favorite places I’ve visited and lived up to the hype.

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Getting there without a car….is a struggle. So if you can figure out how to rent a car, or convince someone with a car to take you go with you that is best, because it is not the cheapest venture. There is no afternoon bus on the weekends, and it takes forever to arrive if you don’t make the estimated time it’ll arrive by (there are only three a day depending on which bus you take). After a mix up and realizing there was no bus, we ended up having to take a taxi and ended up getting stuck in traffic the last 3 or 4 kilometers to our destination. The blossom spot is in the countryside, but it’s so popular amongst Koreans that the roads on both sides of the river going and leaving the village were in dead stopped traffic (which I was quite shocked by how much there was). We ended up leaving the taxi and walking the last 2.5 kilometers because the weather was nice and we ended up walking past all the traffic, so it was probably a good thing. 

Coming back was also a struggle. It was easy enough getting a taxi to village, but trying to get to the bus station was hard because taxis didn’t want to pick up the ride on kakao, or the local ones already had a request. I had taken down the number of the taxi we had been in earlier and I asked a Korean if they could call and see if they could come, but they had no available taxis. We had walked a ways from the village to try and get a ride closer to next town, but that backfired a bit because the area wasn’t as busy as before. I ended up having to go up to a couple because it was getting close to when we needed a ride, and they helped call a taxi much to our relief. We made it back to the bus station in time, so it all worked out, but a car would have made things much easier….I have yet to figure out the whole car rental part so I’m not sure when or if that will happen though haha.

Location:

1563-1 Seomjingangmaehwa-ro, Daap-myeon, Gwangyang-si, Jeollanam-do