Thursday, August 01, 2013

Hampyeong Butterfly Festival

After the Jindo sea parting festival the next stop on the Sunday was a butterfly festival in Hampyeong. I had never heard of this festival before and to be honest I didn't think much of it until we arrived.
It turned out to be held in a little piece of countryside surrounded by what looked like endless fields of yellow flowers and green hills.
There is a butterfly sanctuary right in the middle of the festival where many species of butterflies are being conserved. The area was done up very well with amazing flowers creating a great natural habitat for the butterflies to live in. They also give you a butterfly that they have captured in little plastic containers for you to release into the wild again. I found this a little odd as I am sure some of them were harmed or killed while trying to catch them just so that some tourist could release them again but anyways...
There were also a good variety of food stalls of different cuisines so we got to sample a few different dishes besides the general Korean food on offer. There was also a big fountain in the middle of the festival where kids were running around in the water and having fun. I would say it was definitely more of a child centered festival but we had a great time nonetheless.

Even the lamp posts were fitted to the theme of the festival

Kids having a ball



Pretty yellow flowers

They had taken some of the dead butterflies and preserved them and made art pieces out of them. This was my favorite colored one!

We made some new friends along the way :)

Tree made out of many pot plants


Releasing the captured butterflies






As you can see from Laura's face these were very disgusting looking larvae type things. Not 100%  sure what, I didn't exactly want to get too close




Some of the crafts on sale at the festival

Some beautiful orchids in the sanctuary

xxx

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