Shake It Down
Trip Start
Aug 08, 2008
1
6
Trip End
Aug 17, 2008
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Taroko National Park, Taiwan
Saturday, August 16, 2008
On the 14th, we caught a bus going north and west, and after a taste of some stunning views along the road, disembarked in the heart of Taroko National Park, in the village of Tianxiang. After a quick, bland meal at one of the food stands by the bus stop, we walked up a hill to the Youth Activity Centre, where we got beds for the night. We were in a dorm, but were alone for that first night, I believe.
The first order of business was laundry, and we draped some clothes on our bunk beds to dry before going out to explore.
The reason so many people visit Taroko National Park is for the deep marble gorges through which flow greenish tinted mountain waters. Since we only had a day and a half there, and we wanted to make the most of our time, we immediately struck out on the trail leading to the Baiyang waterfall, the only trail that starts at the village.
The weather was beautiful (read: hot, but not too hot), and the scenery even more so. The road hugged high cliff walls, went through pitch dark tunnels, and emerged in valleys full of trees and butterflies. Over one canyon, an extremely large spider had set up camp; I'm not sure how, but it had managed to spin itself a web between two trees which were growing at least ten metres apart. The spider looked small, but only because it was far away from us. It must have been as big across as my hand, at least.
One of the tunnels the trail went through was so long that there was a stretch in the middle where the safety railing fixed to the rock wall was necessary, since we had no flashlight with us. Unfortunately, there was only one handrail, so we had to go slowly in order to avoid running into people going the other way. One boy wasn't being very careful, though, and ran right into me. My poor nose was tender for days afterward!
Baiyuan Waterfall runs down a sheer cliff face, and the river rushing down in the bottom of the canyon is picturesque indeed. We hung around on the bridge and the viewing platform for a while, taking pictures, then pressed on to the "Cave of Water Curtain", a bit further on. As the name would suggest, it's a cave, though more like a tunnel. At the entrance is a pool of clear, cold, knee-deep water, and once you're inside, it's almost like being in a shower, in places.
Neither of us had brought an umbrella or a rain poncho. Since I didn't want to risk my camera getting wet, we decided that M-P would go in first, since she didn't mind getting soaked. While I was waiting, a kind man offered to lend me his rain poncho; I accepted, took off my shoes, and set foot in the icy water. Inside the cavern was very cool, and the steady streams of water dripping from the ceiling had soon plastered the rain poncho to my skin.
Later that afternoon, we gave our legs another workout by walking to a temple we'd spotted on the way in from Hualien. Since we were in the middle of the mountains, even walking down the street was an exercise in ascending or descending! After taking silly pictures with the statues at the entrance to the nearby bridge (we still weren't off our ice cream high, apparently!), we noticed that the sky had gotten considerably darker and the thunder was a constant rumble in the distance, so we rushed to the temple, reaching it just as the heavens burst.
What a storm! We'd been smart enough to pick up our umbrellas on the way back from the waterfall, just in case we encountered any more water curtains, but even an umbrella offers precious little protection when the sky is throwing sheets of rain down upon you. We were soon soaked from the waist down.
My feet squelched in my shoes. We had supper at the hostel's Youth Café; I had the set menu's "Mixed Pizza" ("Present a juice" is what the menu said, and I was indeed presented with a juice), which was cooked in an actual (toaster, I'm sure) oven. And it had corn! Not bad.
The next morning, we partook of the hostel's breakfast buffet -- Breakfast viking! Includes peaunts (peanuts), stamed bread and seaweed tangle -- before catching a bus to the Taroko Park HQ. The bus followed the same route as we'd taken from Hualien, since it's the only one, so we went through some of the same tunnels. We noticed that for some reason, the ceiling of the bus was tricked out with blue, green and red LED lights that put us in mind of nothing so much as UFO decorations.
We wanted to walk the Shakadang trail (I won't lie, it was partly because we thought the name sounded like "Shake it down!" and we thought that was an awesome name for a trail), but when we arrived at HQ, we found that trail, along with a couple of others, had been closed due to rockslides resulting from a recent typhoon.
We ended up choosing the Eternal Spring trail, which involved us climbing stairs halfway up a mountain, but the view from the top was incredible. There was a little shrine built around the source of the spring, and partway around the mountain there was a pretty bell tower.
On the way back to HQ from the trail, we spotted a little slice of paradise: a mountain pool, fed by a small waterfall. The water was clear and tinted blue-green, and a local aboriginal family was having a picnic there. Mother was cooking lunch over a small open fire while Father and Uncle (or Older Brother?) sat on the rocks, and the young children splashed around naked. We scrambled down the steep incline from the road, exchanged smiles and "Ni hao"s with the family.
M-P and I had our bathing suits in our bags, but as we didn't want to offend local sensibilities (we'd seen Mother swim fully clothed, as women do in Vietnam), we just took off our shoes before diving into the cool water. It was heaven! The scenery, the clarity of the water -- we could see right to the rocky bottom, at least eight feet down -- the warm air...
Later on, we were glad to still be damp, as it cooled us down a bit in the heat. We followed the Nine Turns Tunnel trail, which indeed turned nine times. That was a long tunnel! It wasn't a very long trail, though, and we were soon back at Park HQ, where we had lunch at a table outside the visitor's centre.
The choice of music here is muy interestante. When we sat down to lunch, it was German opera. Followed some random Celtic-sounding stuff, and just now was an instrumental of "Loch Lomond".
Instead of taking the bus, we opted to walk back to Tianxiang village, about 5.5km away. All told, we must have walked over 10km that day, and a considerable part of that was going uphill or down. We weren't the only ones walking along the side of the road to admire the scenery in a way you simply can't from the tinted window of a bus, or even the open window of a car.
At times we were walking on the curb of the road itself; at others, there was a trail specifically for pedestrians, or an old section of the road had been left accessible for those on foot.
Living in Tokyo, it's easy to forget, at times, that I don't look like everybody else. The people here don't usually openly stare at foreigners and if they look twice, they do it covertly enough that I don't notice. In Taiwan, however, especially outside of Taipei, blue eyes do attract attention. Not the wide-eyed, fascinated stares and gawking I got in Vietnam, but a fair bit of curiosity. As we were walking along, a couple of girls even struck up a conversation with me.
Teresa and Kelly, 12 and 11, asked me my name, where I was from, and if I'd come to Taiwan "to play or teach." Kelly told me, "You're very beautiful," which amused me quite a bit. After all, I been hiking all day, had gone swimming with my clothes on, and the sweat and humidity were making my hair frizz and curl up in odd directions. Not my most attractive moment, for sure!
Once again, we spent a lazy evening at the hostel. This was back before I photographed every single meal, so all I have to remember that supper by are the words "white sauce with bacon noodles" that I copied from the menu. I imagine it was some sort of spaghetti with cream sauce.
The 16th was to be our last day in Taiwan, and also my birthday (observed), since we wouldn't be able to celebrate it the day of. As a birthday meal, I wanted to eat at the Leader Village Hotel in Buluowan, which promised traditional aboriginal fare.
We had to be back in Taipei that evening, so we figured we'd catch a Hualien-bound bus, get off at Buluowan, eat, then hop on another bus and get off at Hualien's train station. A good plan, in theory, except that when the bus came and I said our destination was Buluowan, the driver informed me he didn't stop there. Buluowan, you see, is about ten minutes off the main road -- a very steep ten minutes up. The next bus that took the turn-off wasn't until the afternoon, which was too late for us. Normally, I would have suggested we walk it, but we had our backpacks, and had seen how steep it was on the way in, and it was quite possibly the sunniest, hottest day we'd had yet in Taiwan, so a Plan B was in order.
Plan B was to go over to the nearby Grand Formosa Hotel and ask if they could call us a taxi. After some difficult communication (I tried with all my might to remember some useful Mandarin, as the girl at the desk spoke no English), it was determined that one of the hotel's shuttle buses would drive us to the turn-off for Buluowan, where a shuttle from the Leader Village Hotel would pick us up. "Much cheaper than a taxi!" the clerk assured me. After lunch, we could take a hotel shuttle bus directly into Hualien.
Complicated, but we made it! There were a few moments of uncertainty when we arrived at the turn-off and no Leader Village van was waiting for us, but it showed up within minutes, and we were on our way up.
Lunch was good, full of mountain vegetables, savoury soup and wild boar! I love game. "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" is the background music. I guess it's Christmas year-round in the Toroko Gorge! When we were done, we paid for our ride back into Hualien, bought some souvenirs, and at 2:30 boarded the minibus. We were at the train station within an hour, and I'm sure I slept most of the way, tired as I was from all the walking, and stuffed as I was from the plentiful food.
Having some time before our train, we browsed the souvenir shops, picking up some last-minute gifts. One of the shops sold many different kinds of alcohol, and they were generous with the tasting cups. Don't mind if I do! I wound up buying a bottle of millet alcohol and a bottle of sweet potato alcohol, and spent some time rearranging the things in my backpack so everything would fit. It was our last day, so I wasn't too worried about the extra weight.
Our 4:40 train was supposed to get us to Taipei for 7:15, but there were several instances of "This is an unexpected stop. Please do not get off the train," so we ended up arriving nearer to 8 o'clock.
I probably slept most of the way, though. We had booked rooms in the same hostel we'd stayed in before, but explained that we needed a taxi to come pick us up at 4:30 -- our flights left at 7 the next morning. The hostel employee arranged this for us, and then we went out for our last meal in Taiwan.
Since it was still my birthday (observed), I abused this privilege by insisting we go to a certain restaurant that Lonely Planet Taiwan promised had poutine. Why on earth would I want to eat poutine in Taiwan, home of so many other delicious foods? Well, for one thing, poutine doesn't exist in Japan. A few restaurants serve it, but even if the gravy is right (and it never has been in Japan), you can't get cheese curds here. Another reason to check out the restaurant was that it was part used bookstore, heavy on the sci-fi and fantasy, which both M-P and I like.
We found the neighbourhood, but couldn't find the restaurant. As we were wandering around, guidebook in hand, a woman stopped to ask us if we needed help finding anything.
"We're looking for a restaurant..."
"Are you looking for Bongos, by any chance?" It turned out she was the owner! She had lived in Canada for a few years before returning to Taipei to open her restaurant. One of the things she really missed about Canada was the poutine, she told us, and she'd searched high and low to find a supplier of something resembling cheese curds in Asia, to no avail. Still, the poutine was excellent, with good gravy and tasty fries, and as close as you can get to the real thing on this side of the planet. We also bought a few books, and left feeling satisfied.
Back at the hostel, as I was in the bathroom getting ready for bed, M-P struck up a conversation with one of our dormmates. Apparently, we were the only women in the room, and he made a crack about how M-P and I "would hog the bathroom all the time." Because, you know, women do that, even though M-P and I most likely take less time in the bathroom than the average guy. Charming fellow. He also made some disparaging remarks about all the foreigners who come to Taiwan to teach English. "It's not even a real job," he sniffed. He worked in computers or management or something.
All right, so maybe a lot of the people who go to Asia to teach English don't have teaching degrees or aren't doing it as a career, but dude? YOU ARE LIVING IN A HOSTEL DORM. YOU'VE BEEN HERE LONG ENOUGH THAT YOU HAVE YOUR OWN LAUNDRY HAMPER IN THE CORNER OF THE ROOM AND YOUR SUIT IS HANGING FROM THE WINDOW SILL ON A WIRE COAT HANGER.
Before turning in for the night, I plotted the quickest and most silent way to get ready in the morning. I'm proud to say that after my alarm went off, I was dressed, packed and in the common room in under five minutes flat.
Our taxi to the airport had a vase of fresh lilies in it. Sure beats the smell of cigarettes you always get in Japanese taxis!
M-P's flight left a bit before mine did, so we said our goodbyes at security, and I spent my remaining Taiwanese dollars on food and a couple of little souvenirs.
It was truly my birthday, finally, so I took it easy upon returning to Tokyo, once again observing how odd it was that while in Taipei, signs everywhere in the subway system promise hefty fines to those caught eating or drinking, it's perfectly acceptable to have your cell phone ringer at maximum volume; in Japan, signs kindly ask passengers to switch off their phones, or put them on manner mode, and while few people eat or drink on the trains, it's not expressly forbidden.
