The Gilroy of South Korea

Early Saturday morning John and I headed out on a school district organized "theme trip" to a garlic festival on an island about 2.5 hours away.

The welcoming committee. 

Garlic art exhibition.  

More garlic art.  The petals are actually made of shaved garlic cloves.

Garlic sculpture using the stalk of the garlic.

Weaving with garlic strands.

This was the closest thing to a carnival ride.  This man has you turn the handle, toasting the rice inside.

When it's toasted, he opens the hatchet and the influx of air causes the rice to pop (with gusto).

Popped rice for everyone!

Next, we ventured over to the garlic fields.

We then proceeded to scour the garlic field for "notes."  For the first 3 minutes were were very enthusiastic, but we lost our gusto by the end of 15 minutes or so.

But then we got to pick garlic.  Yes!

Our bounty.  The reason John's not looking at the camera is that many Koreans came over to take a photo of the silly Westerner with a mound of garlic.

Apparently, in addition to being known for it's garlic, Namhae, is also a popular kayaking destination.  We were only out for a short time, but were very happy to be out in a kayak.

After a looong bus ride back to Busan we stashed our garlic in a subway locker instead of carrying it around with us all evening.  Although, when we eventually took it back home on the bus we received many a quizzical stare and hearty laugh.