Taiwan: Hualien

A 5 hour train ride was all the separated me from a completely different world. I traded in my scooter helmet for a rafting helmet. Instead of scooter exhaust, I smelled the ocean breeze.

Our train left at 6am on Saturday morning, so naturally I went to bed after 1:30am. I’ll sleep on the train, right? Wrong! It was standing room only, so I spent the whole ride leaning against a wall next to the bathroom. Let me tell you, I was not a happy camper. On top of that, I got motion sickness and spent most of the day with an upset stomach and headache.

After we checked into our hostel we took a bus to what we thought was an Aquarium. Well, it actually ended up being a children’s amusement park. But who cares, we still had fun riding mini rides. The log ride was especially fun. Viking Voyager would be jealous of this ride. The coolest part of the amusement park was that it was on the side of a mountain overlooking the ocean. Pretty cool views.

Later that night we went out to eat. Bad food. Bad service. Awesome Location. Right on the shore. Massive waves crushing the coast. I think all teachers need to take monthly trips to the ocean. Rather than listening to kids screaming for direction that you just gave 3 times, all you hear is water hitting rocks. Loved it.

Early the next morning we bussed up into the mountains to a rafting company. They went thru the whole safety talk, only it wasn’t the same as back home. Instead of sitting properly, you straddle the raft. Then when you hit rapids, you stop paddlin’ and duck down inside your raft. If you know anything about rafting, you know this is insane. Oh and they suggest wearing long sleeves and jeans. Our paddles were half the size normal paddles and we had the most ridic life jackets and helmets.

But who cares, im in the mountains, in the middle of the forest, on a clay colored river. Life is good. So the first half of the river was spent splashing all the other rafts. We kept getting in front of the pack(of probably 200 people) because it was much nice not having a bajillion boats around us. It was easy to do because Taiwanese are lilly dippers. Im not sure why they even gave them paddles. Another odd part was they didn’t give each raft a guide. Instead they had motorized rafts that they would push the boats. Annoying and dangerous. Not a fan!

After lunch is where it got really fun. So they hooked all of the boats up and pulled them down the river. This is because the rapids were much tuffer in this section and the Taiwanese don’t know how to raft. So after one set of rapids, where the boat directly attached to us flipped and sent 8 startled people down a raging river, we decided to break loose. The guides weren’t fans of this. But oh well.

We had 8 people in our raft. The 6 originals, and 2 Taiwanese that we saved. Only 2 of use had ever really been rafting before. The river went from maybe an easy class 2 to a difficult class 3, with maybe a class 4 rapid or two sprinkled in there. So, without a guide, and a lot of first timers in the raft I was quite impressed with how we maneuvered down the river. Apparently so were the other rafters.

As we wove our way back and forth between a few boulders we emerged into a clearing. There awaited at least 100 rafters and guides all cheering for us, doing synchronized claps. They were truly impressed that we navigated our way down. From then on, we became celebs. Every boat tried to get near us, splash us, take our picture. They all wanted to say “Ni hau”( hello) to the white people. It was a whole lot of fun.

We got picked up just before our raft got to the ocean. From there we took a bus up the mountains and along the coast. This coast looks just like the Oregon coast only less developed and bigger waves. Very pretty.

Then another 5 hour train ride back to Taichung. Went to bed. Woke up and it’s Monday morning. Yippeee!! (sarcasm)

Here are a bunch of pictures and videos from the trip. I haven’t looked thru to delete the bad ones so sorry if some of the pictures suck. Also, some of the videos may or may not have us doing the gangnam style dance. We may or may not be making a music video.