I set off at 9AM Saturday morning with Kenzie, Katelin, and her friend Jessica. We took the 3 1/2 hour train (which was freezing, even in a jacket and several layers because of their love for air conditioning, even in colder weather) down the east coast, where there were spectacular views of the ocean on one side and steep cliffs on the other! We got to Hsincheng, the town at the entrance to the National Park, and were met by the lady from our 'hotel.' (Booking the hotel was a strange experience and left us wondering if we were really going to a hotel or somebody's house where they would charge us to sleep on the floor...) She had a friend (of course!) who rented scooters and so even though you are supposed to have a Taiwanese driver's license to rent them, all we had to do was give her the money and off we went! There was no signing of papers, paying a deposit, or leaving collateral! Things like this are a lot more casual and trusting here, which is nice.So then off we went to the hotel (which did indeed turn out to be a hotel, with a whopping 6 rooms.) We then headed off to scooter up the gorge.
It was so amazing...the gorge itself is extremely steep walls of marble carved out by a river of blue-green water. There are lots and lots of tunnels and caves (apparently over 450 people died to make this road) and every time you emerge there is more pretty scenery. The water is really blue-green and is never made murky by flooding because there is a dam further upstream. We took our time going the 20km up to the little village and then turned around to make it back to the hotel before it got dark. We went to the town of Hualien (about 3 times the size of Hsincheng, which didn't have much to do) and hit up some of the little night markets there. One of them was right on the seaside and there were stands to buy any size firework to light off over the ocean! So the whole time we were there it looked and sounded like fourth of July.
As we drove the 20km back to our hotel, we were marveling at how little traffic there was compared to Taipei. When we got back, we were relaxing for a few minutes in our room when all of a sudden I saw a HUGE spider scurry under our bed! With it's legs, it was about the size of a grapefruit. We all screamed and jumped onto the bed. After a lot of commotion and planning, we moved the bed and tried to capture it underneath the trashcan but we missed it and it ran underneath the opposite bed! What followed was a lot of disassembling of furniture to get at the spider, shoe-throwing, laughing and shrieking, but we finally killed it because we all knew that we wouldn't sleep with it lurking in the room. We made quite a bit of noise, but there were no other guests and if our hostess noticed the noise and wondered what the heck was going on, she was too polite to say anything the next morning. None of us slept too well that night and as a result most of us felt the earthquake that night (a magnitude 5.6, which is common weekly occurrence for this area.)The next day we scootered back up the gorge and stopped at some different places and then picked up some lunch to eat in the park of the little village. While we were eating, a Taiwanese Jehovah's Witness tried to convert us all; we tried not to be too obvious about throwing away the pamphlet she forced on us. Once we were finished, we tried to drive the 1km further up the road to start our hike, but the road was closed due to a landslide...what an inconvenience! (There are signs everywhere instructing you to wear a helmet while in the Park - the most famous area where tour buses unload actually has baskets of hardhats for borrowing.)
So we drove down to the Park headquarters where there was another trail close by. It was so well kept and maintained that women were 'hiking' it in high heels. It went along the gorge where the water was especially blue! There are also aboriginals who live right in the Park and were selling candied flowers and marble sculptures. (While we stopped briefly at one of these stands, a Taiwanese tourist was surprised to learn that I was an American because he "didn't know they came that small!" He was sure I was Canadian.) Monkeys are supposed to be plentiful in this area, so we were kind of disappointed when we didn't see any. When we finished the hike, we went back to our hotel and sat out front with the owners for a bit to have a quick snack, then we went off to a beach area they recommended. It was another 30 minutes away and it was so, so pretty! On our way there it started to get fairly windy and stormy but it made it even more exciting (especially on the scooters...). Although the water looks so inviting, only the suicidal swim in it (according to our Lonely Planet book!) because of the strong undertows and currents.We had dinner at a cute little restaurant on the side of the road and then went back
to the train station to return our scooters and wait for the train. We got there early and figured there would at least be a little something to do, but as it was a Sunday night in a small town...there was only a convenience store about .5 km down the road! So after killing about 2 hours, our train arrived and we made it back to Taipei just after midnight...just in time to catch the last MRT home and into bed to start another week of teaching the little ones!
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