Hualien - Part 1

the fifteenth of november, two thousand and twelve

  ...And I'm back! Sorry about the hiatus, let's catch up.  So Monday arrived and I packed up my backpack and left behind my laptop for a few days.  Grant stuck behind in Taipei while I went to the Taoyuan airport to meet up with a good friend of mine who a few of you might know, Jordan Watson.  She has been living in Korea for the past couple years and needed to pop out of the country for visa purposes.  At the airport after their plane arrived, Jordan's friend Sung Ah picked me out (wasn't hard to find a dark haired American) but Jordan wasn't there!   She missed her flight by seven minutes and had to reschedule!  So we got some coffee while we waited.  Unfortunately, I had the only cell phone between Grant and I so he had no way of knowing the situation.  

  Well it wasn't too long before she arrived and were on the bus back to Taipei.  Poor Grant waited for us for two hours at the station and I don't imagine he was too happy with me but we found him and after joining Xian Yu, the five of us got on the 5:10pm train for Hualien. 

  Hualien is a beautiful area full of different aboriginal tribes from Taiwan.  We arrived at 8pm and were met by Josh's friend Lin Ping who is an Amis brother.  He has a large three-story house where we all could stay comfortably for the next two nights.

  On Tuesday, we rented two more scooters so the six of us could get around.  I still hadn't driven a scooter and was not about to have a passenger the first time, so I rode with Lin Ping.  He really didn't want to take us to Toroko Gorge because he said it's too dangerous, too far and not that beautiful in comparison to where he wanted to take us.  He's the native, so off we went to Mugumuyu, a little know area with much less tourists.  The authorities only allow six hundred people in each day, three hundred in the morning and another three hundred in the afternoon.  We applied around ten thirty but we needed to wait until noon to enter so we headed to the lake behind us and rented two little pedal boats and went out on the water.  They were tiring but fun.

   At noon we went into the gorge and it was breathtakingly amazing! The pictures don't even do it justice.  The water inside the gorge was vividly bright and had little fishies swimming around.  We stopped the bikes along the road and trekked down to the water. Wow! It was crystal clear and not very cold.  I knew I would regret not going in so I stripped down and went for a swim.  Grant was smart and brought some board shorts so he joined me.  

  You should've seen the way Lin Ping was jumping over those rocks like they were nothing! He said when he was a boy he was much more agile. Umm, did that mean he could fly? 

  We had some lunch from some local aboriginals.  Some sticky rice made inside bamboo sticks, chicken in broth that tasted super yeasty, some leafy vegetable that I swear was just a leaf, and an omelet that was really good!  Got a few more gifts there too.  The place is full of unique rock formations and such so the aboriginals make jewelry out of these beautiful rocks. 

   
To Be Continued.....