We were definitely thinking of Beth, Lute, and all their Hope College friends here!! Love you!! :-)
Oh my goodness, what a day it has been. Paul and Alana are up resting in their room after a long day of hiking. They will also figure out a place for us to eat supper tonight here in Hualien later. I really wish I could post pictures now, but I don't think photos can come close to showing the magnificence of the many scenic areas we drove and hiked through today.
Our day started with showers in our charming room here at Charming City Hotel, where there is a window between the shower and the bedroom!! Very unusual. :-) The hotel room is beautifully decorated, in a kind of European feel. We receive complimentary bottles of water daily, and the first night, the staff also hand-delivered some juicy apples and some special rice from this region which we can take home to cook. All the Taiwanese are very gracious, hospitable, and friendly. There are also paper house-slippers in the hotel rooms, according to the Asian custom of not wearing shoes in houses. Later we went down to breakfast and ate quickly, then met P/A in the lobby where our taxi driver had just arrived. Alana had researched online and called a taxi driver named Tony who was recommended as a good tour guide who spoke English, but when Paul called him a couple days ago, he was already booked. He called a friend named Well, who we hired for the day. What a stroke of luck!! Well has a new taxi, four days old, and he spoke English very well. (No pun intended!! LOL!!)
Our first stop, sadly, was 7-Eleven!! HAHA!! But we bought four large bottles of water for our day of hiking, as well as some bread and peanut butter for a picnic lunch (sound familiar, Olson kids???) and some cookies and nuts for snacks. We needed to head into the wilderness prepared. Then we headed up into Taroko Gorge National Park. The gorge is a deep natural river bed through the mountains into which an east-west road was painstakingly cut through the rock. This area is well known for its granite, and we saw many beautifully colored examples of granite. The sides of the mountain are incredibly steep, and the views were breath-taking throughout the day. The water below was a unique color of turquoise - very beautiful. Our driver would drop us off, show us on the map where to hike, then pick us up again to continue on to the next site. He also had umbrellas for when it rained, and handed flashlights to A/P on one hike, for the long, dark tunnel on the route!! The road and hiking paths are very narrow and are cut right into the side of the mountain, and there are a lot of tunnels. We even got to go on one hanging bridge over the gorge that seemed like it was right out of an "Indiana Jones" movie - very cool!! Oh we saw some huge spiders and webs over some of the hiking trails (which Alana is afraid of!) Impressive though!
We stopped for lunch near a Buddhist monastery, very peaceful and beautiful, and we ate on some granite stools on a granite table --- all very low to the ground Asian style. Our picnic lunch really reminded us of many other Olson family vacations with the PB sandwiches!! We bought some fresh ripe peaches from a vendor nearby, and they were ridiculously pricey, but worth the splurge one time!! (Location, location, location ---- no other choices for peaches at that altitude! HAHA!) After resting, we were ready for more hiking. It was definitely nice having Well's taxi to ride in between our climbs!!
Paul kept looking out for the snakes we were warned about on many signs, but we never saw them. Also no monkeys, which Well said we might see. Bummer. But on our last stop in Taroko Gorge, we went to a shrine built in honor of the 266 men who died building the road. And there were caves there. Deep dark caves. With bats. BIGGEST bats we'd ever seen. Swooping down towards us suddenly along the trail on the cliff. By now, Lute, if you are reading this, you are certain to be laughing hysterically, knowing how your mother reacted. Well, let's just say I was very startled!! Did I mention the bats were really big?? Really big. Yes indeed. Thankfully, we were ready to get in the car soon and not go near any more caves! Let's just say these bats put the Riverside Bible Camp chapel bats to shame in terms of size and swooping down towards us. Holy Bat Cave, Robin!!!!
The last scheduled stop on our tour with Well was at the Cingshuei Cliffs, which are overlooking the Pacific Ocean. At this spot, the mountains come almost right up to the edge of the sea, with just a narrow space cut out above the beach for a road and the railroad tracks we traveled yesterday. Again, the view was spectacular. When we got back to Well's taxi, he asked me if we had mountains in Iowa, and I said no. Then he asked if we had beaches in Iowa, and I said no, we didn't have either one. So he smiled and said here I had seen both in one day!! So cute!! (I haven't mentioned that early on, I made a little notecard drawing of the USA, so I can show people here where we are from. They always ask if we're from California, so I whip out my little drawing and point to Iowa on my map, also labeled with CA, NY, the Mississippi River, and Iowa!!)
When we got in the taxi, Well said we had extra time, so he'd take us one more spot, down to a beach back hear the city. (We could only see the beach from high above on the cliff at Cingshuei.) Well told us that usually people take one or two of the hikes, then complain that their legs are tired, and they walk much more slowly, so we did a good job to be done with the tour early after doing all the hikes. We really enjoyed the beach, and we all felt the warm Pacific waters. Some felt more than others......like Paul who got absolutely soaked when a BIG wave crashed onto the shore!! Well had told us we could touch the water but not swim, but Paul almost looked like he had been swimming! Luckily, Paul had another pair of shorts to change into.
So that's the story on our day of touring and hiking. P/A just came down to use the computers, so we'll be heading out to supper soon. Tomorrow we'll be exploring here and maybe going to the beach before our train departs back to Taipei.
Love,
-M and T-
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