The Life of Rachel: Taroko Gorge - Taiwan's "Grand Canyon"

Alright. Taroko Gorge was a very interesting weekend. Very fun, but very interesting. Long, but quick. It's hard to explain..

On the train, we were so excited at the beginning

First Tessa and I met Catherine, one of our university students, at the train station. We took a train to Johngli. That train ride was pretty fun, I sat on the floor for a while while Tessa braided my hair. People stared of course. We were going to Jhongli to meet up with one of Catherine's friends. His son was graduating from college in Jhongli and we were going to stay at his house that night, he lives near Taroko Gorge. We walked around Jhongli and did a little bit of shopping. I bought some jewelry and an umbrella. We also had an amazing lunch at a place called Dante coffee shop. It was so delicious, I had a bagel brunch. When we were finally picked up we went to the university graduation. An older man gave a speech in English which I still couldn't understand because he was so old. It was only an hour long which was nice, no one had to walk up to get diplomas. They played its a small world at the end and had Disney characters come out and dance. It was an interesting graduation.

Dantes Coffee

Graduation!

Graduation Decorations

The characters dancing

So then we drove to Taipei to pick up Catherine and the man's friend, Penny. We got lost for over an hour and u turned I don't know how many times. It was crazy and frustrating. I was car sick, hot, tired and starving. We finally got to the girls house after being promised food and not receiving it.. We stopped to go to the bathroom and bought fries at McDonald's cuz I had such a bad headache. The friend bought us sweet potatoes and tea eggs. Fed and a little more happy we took off again.

Random scooter, had bug shield!

We listened to Malaysian mixed with hip hop music while we drove. Tessa was such a good sport about the whole thing. Then the music changed to Artic Norway music. Penny does a lot of traveling for work so she had a lot of music. We also listened to native Taiwanese music. It was interesting to listen to. And the man could not drive. At all. We were frequently driving in two lanes at once and always either flying backwards or forwards as his lead foot was also a heavy hitter on the brake. He got in an accident coming out after the graduation ceremony. And he didn't even realize it. We all felt it and were like what was that and he just kept driving! Finally the car he hit made him stop at a light and got all his information.

In the car, tired and sick.

When we got to Yilan we stopped on the road for 25 min because he couldn't figure out where the entrance to the parking lot was. At this point Tessa and I just wanted a bed to sleep in but we stopped at the famous Yilan night marker. We drank Kumquat juice and ate doe sha, a yummy tofu and bean and soy bean dish. We did some cheap shopping. On the way back to the car I got hit in the head by a parking lot arm lifter thingy. Also, we just pumped gas with the car still on. Is that allowed? How am I still alive? I am still so confused. We finally got to his house, exhausted and very car sick at like 1 am. We were told many times were were almost there, or only 40 more minutes, and then 2 hours later we finally pulled up.

Doe Sha, the soy bean tofu deliciousness

On the way we had to stop at a rest place. The road was so curvy and he was such a bad driver. I'm pretty sure one or two of us threw up. I just wanted to really bad. So he lived in an aboriginal area, which i assume is sort of like our Indian Reservations but I'm not exactly sure. He was full blooded native Taiwanese so it was cool to hear his stories about his grandparents.

Sunday we woke up at 6 and got started. We had warm soy bean milk and sandwiches for breakfast. Then we headed to Taroko Gorge. It was beautiful. A big canyon. However some of the same things from the night before plagued me. On the road in the national park Penny told me that Americans told the Taiwanese that to build a national park here was mission impossible because it is so dangerous. Many people died while building the road. All I could think was that I was gonna be the next one dead on this road. This driving was incredible. Incredibly bad. So at Taroko we looked at the gorge and then saw a hotel that is set up like an aboriginal village. It was very serene and peaceful. There were pictures of aborigines up. It was cool! It reminded me a lot of Native Americans.

The entrance of Taroko Gorge

Asian Picture

Trying to Jump

Beautiful!

Cool wall??

A bridge across the Gorge you can pay extra to
walk across it

Also I figured out, Asian people don't even understand each other. The accents are different and everyone says the words differently. How one person tells me to pronounce a word is different them how the next person says it. And the tones have a huge part too. And I have heard two Asians in Chinese get confused and have to ask what they are talking about because one word is wrong.

Inside an aboriginal house

the bed

outside the house

The hotel village

This was like an echo thing

What the Aborigines look like

cool looking road over the gorge

Anyways, Taroko was beautiful and I am glad we got to see it. For lunch we went to an Aboriginal village and got to help make our lunch. That was such a cool experience. We cut down and caught papayas and cooked in the kitchen. They had made really good fish and chicken and pork. It was so hot that day. We were dying from the heat and just sitting there sweating. The bugs were so bad too. We got so many bites from no-see-ums. Little bugs you can't see. And there were flies. Everywhere, in our drinks, on the food. They could not understand why we did not want to drink out of the cups that the flies had been sitting in. We just don't eat bugs! Sorry! It was the worst environment but we made the best of it and I'm actually really glad I got to have that experience.

Wearing a basket to catch Papayas

The place we cooked lunch

Cleaning Veges

This Fish cooking. It was really good!

What the area looks like

Trying to catch a papaya

Some of our food

Eating Red Rice

Our spread

Eating the papaya I caught

The whole group

After we made lunch we ate some shaved ice with Mangoes on top, a Taiwan specialty. It was so good after so much heat. Then we drove to Hualien and saw the Pacific Ocean! This was the most exciting part of the trip for me. I had been wanting to see the Pacific Ocean since I got here. I could imagine home on the other side! Hualien had very bright houses everywhere, it was cool. While we were at the beach we discovered the train we were going to take was sold out so we had to scramble to the train station and figure out how to get home for work the next day. We ended up taking a local train up to Yilan and then a bus to Taipei and then the High Speed Rail to Taichung and then a train to Changhua and then had a bike ride. It was a long trip home but the high speed rail cut our trip a lot shorter which was so nice. The weekend felt like it took forever because of the car rides and the lack of sleep, but it was an experience I am so glad for and would never change.