Let's Build a Sandcastle!

I've seen some awesome sand castles.  However, I've never seen professionally done sand sculptures.  However, that changed on June 6th.  There is an international sand sculpting festival in Busan.  So Nicole and I made our way to the beach on June 6th to check out the sand sculptures.  There were massive!  I was very impressed.  It seemed as though many were trying to tell a story, but it had to be an interesting story when you see the combination of animals in many of the sculptures.  Either way it was a lot of fun and we ended the day with Korean BBQ.  Just another fun Saturday adventure :)

The first sculpture I saw was a memorial for the Sewol ferry crash.  Yellow ribbons have been used throughout Korea as memorials for the ferry crash victims.  It seemed like a fitting tribute for this sculpture to be here during the festival.

Beside the yellow ribbon sculpture was this hear that was being filled with yellow origami boats.  The boats were fill filled with messages again for the ferry crash victims.

Placing a boat on the memorial

They also had these 3 angel statues that were used for pictures but also had ribbons tied on them as a tribute to the ferry crash.  It was quite the popular place for photos.

Placing a ribbon

Even cute little kids were having their photos taken :)

This first sculpture reminded me a lot of the Ankor ruins in Cambodia.  It was essentially made like a gate and was the opening sculpture for the festival.

Looking back at the pictures now, I see how this seems to be setting the theme for the festival as most of the sculptures were filled with animals associated with the jungle or the savannas of Africa.

Best guess is the Korean at the bottoms says "Welcome to the Jungle."  But that is just because the other side said that in English.  The top right word is Haeundae which is the name of the beach where the festival was located.  

I love that this sculpture is continued half way around the back side as well.  The details of the rocks are so incredible even when they are not really seen when looking at the sculpture from the front.

The detail was just incredible.  The elephants were my favorite sculpture of the day.

This was my second favorite.  The eagle was incredible and huge!  The detail of this one was also fantastic.

And just as I was walking away from the eagle I took a closer look at the rest of the sculpture.  To me it looks like the tree from Pocahontas.  I was 

The eagle and tree together.

The giraffe was fascinating so much that I missed the baby giraffe to the right for  a while.

                          

These sculpture also made me think about the Genesis and the serpent in the garden.

It continued on with many zebras and another tree.

I love the detail with the one zebra in the background and not as close.  I was just blown away by how they could change the texture of the sand as well as the detail they could achieve.

This was probably the strangest one to me.  It started with the a tiger and moved to a gorilla.

From the gorilla it had parrots followed by a bear and her cubs.

                                                            

This one was much like the elephants in that the design wrapped around toward the back.

And the cutest little girl getting her picture taken with the rhino.

Past the rhino was a monkey, crocodile and hippo.   Oh and a waterfall as well.

Then at the end there was space for families to make there own sand sculptures.  These kids were quite serious about what they were building.

And they had a massive hill of sand that you could climb up.  I opted to watch all the kids struggling to climb up.  On the other side they you could kind of sled down the hill that looked fun.

Couldn't resist one more picture of my favorite.