A Forest of Flowers - Okryongsa Camellia Forest, Gwangyang

 Our destination was the Camellia Forest, and our car was filled with four friends because, Covid. We are still capped at private gatherings of no more than four. First up, we stopped at the huge golden Buddha statue that grabs your attention from far away.

I don't have any background info on this temple, other than the name Un-Amsa Temple because this is what the sign read:

I searched online and couldn't find anything. You would think with a couple of guys who look like this I would be able find to some kind of info out there about them.

Kate, Trish, Sandy, Shelley

The Buddha belly!

After the Un-Amsa Temple we moved on to the Camellia Forest. It's located at the bottom of Mt. Baekgye. The Okryongsa Temple was located here during the AD 890s. It is said that the master who lived there at the time planted camellias around the temple to reinforce the energy of the earth around the temple. The temple has since perished, but the camellia forest has survived for thousands of years. It is the largest cluster of camellia trees in the nation, with about 10,000 trees.

I love the way that visitors pick up the flowers that have fallen off the trees and arrange them in pretty ways.

These are the remains of the Okryongsa Temple, built  2,000 years ago during the Silla period. It has recently been excavated. It doesn't look like much, but it shows historical facts about that time period. The Buddhist priest who planted the camellia forest was said to be the master of Korean Fengshui Geography, and the trees were part of the fengshui flow of enhancing the earth's energy.

Here's another example how the people like to make things pretty.

From here we started to hike up Baekgyesan.

No more camellias here, but the azaleas were just starting to peek their little heads out.

I thought this tree was unique.

We made it to the top! Five hundred five meters.

It was on the way down that we somehow got off the path and got lost for a hot minute.

While looking for the path home I found another of those unique tree trunks.

We made it back!

[March 14]