The Big Trip

So our Moon Festival holiday started out with Emily's birthday party, which was a huge success. Mostly because her sister made some really great fajitas, guacamole and salsa, and her bro in law made really great margaritas from scratch, no mix was used!! Incredible! It was great, my mouth was so happy:)

We got off to a bit of a rough start on Saturday; Emily and I went out in search of our rental car, but couldn't find the place. People don't bother to use signs here so it's impossible to find anything, and it's all in Chinese. Really frustrating. And it was raining on us as we drove the scooter around. So after almost two hours we gave up. She and Shaun went back out and finally got a car, and we left the city around 3. We drove up through Taipei and then down the east coast of the island on a very scenic road that goes just along the sea. It was beautiful except that it was raining. We also had to stop for two hours while a backhoe cleared the road from a huge rockslide that happened. It was really scary because we were just on this cliff with huge rocks hanging over the road. (On our way home in the daylight we saw where lots of huge rockslides had happened because of the rain, and there were places where huge chunks of the road had just fallen off the cliff into the ocean below. It was sobering because we weren't able to see that when we were driving down during the night. Yikes.) We finally made it to a town called Hualien and found our hostel which was a really beautiful place surrounded by fields, palm trees and banana trees, right at the foot of some mountains with waterfalls in the distance. Wowie, it was pretty.

Sunday we drove through Taroko Gorge, which is one the most amazing things I have ever seen. Emily even said it was better than the Grand Canyon (I have not been there yet). It was raining so we didn't get to hike as much as we wanted to, but we still got to see a lot of great scenery and took many many photos. Because it was raining there were tons of waterfalls everywhere--it was so breathtaking! That night we stayed with the friends of the man we stayed with the night before. They decided to take us out that night to see an aboriginal dance and also to eat some dumplings. They were great! They didn't speak much English but were completely enthralled with us. They bought us food and souveniers, and the husband even did some Chinese caligraphy on a rock for each of us with our name on it! It was a really cool gift and we definitely appreciated their kindness and enthusiasm. They just didn't want us to leave the next day, so they took pictures of us outside of their house and then made us stay while they made a cd for each of us with the pictures. It was kind of funny but so so nice of them:) They were great, I will never forget them. How unexpected that we got to stay at their house because we hadn't even planned on staying another night there! I'm really glad we did.

Monday we drove to a twon called Yilan where there are a lot of hot springs. We stayed at a really weird hotel there and bathed in the hot water. We got some great street food for dinner and walked through the streets for a while. The next day it finally stopped raining! It was amazing, after almost a week of rain it stopped the day we had to go home! So we packed up and headed back to the city. We stopped in a little town called Ping Lin at a tea museum to do a tasting and to buy some tea. There was a very beautiful river that went through the town and all you could see were hills covered in tea farms. It was a beautiful place and I would really like to go back there. We then dropped Angela and Shaun off in Taipei since they were flying out that evening, and we drove back to Hsinchu. Emily had the very bright idea that we eat at Fridays for lunch so we indulged ourselves and LOVED LIFE. I had a normal hamburger with normal meat and normal fries. I was in Heaven. That afternoon Sam and I drove the scooter down to the beach about 15 minutes away and walked around a little bit. The beach near us is not that amazing, but a little farther down it is very nice, so we are going there this weekend.

It was a great break and we all had a super time. I can't wait to see more of Taiwan! I can't believe how much there is to see here on such a small little island. I am in the process of uploading almost 200 pictures, and they are definitely worth checking out. Lots of cool stuff. i had some difficulties with my computer but Sam sorted it out after I nearly chucked the thing out the window. Anyway, problem solved and photos are on the way...