The Hunting School was actually really good. The aboriginal population live mainly here on the east coast, many are Christian due to the work of missionaries over the years. I am not convinced the new religion has improved their lives much, much like Aussie, but the skills of bush survival we learned were pretty cool. I discovered that if the Walters family get lost in the mountains here, I will die. I told the others to forget about sentiment and eat me, so I can feel like I contributed.
Tom and Nick had a fire lighting competition.
Tom won. Nick came second. It was a good fire, made from scratch using a native plant whose name I can’t remember. If ever they get lost on Yacaaba again, I am confident that if they can find one of these Taiwanese plants, they will survive ok.
A great aboriginal Taiwan meal. Top tucker, this.
This is the entrance to Taroko Gorge. The sign says something like, “be very frightened of everything.”
Taroko Gorge was magnificent. On the way in, in the “typhoon” the gorge was spectacular with waterfalls, but this day the rain had stopped and although the river was still running fast, it was not a raging torrent any more. The trail we walked was brilliant. It is impossible to describe the scale, the tallest of the gorge walks snakes across the cliff tops at over 1000 metres. We didn’t do this one. The gorge cuts through marble mountains, forming all sorts of shapes in a variety of colours. It is magic.
This is a shrine to the 200 people killed during the building of the road here. It is unimaginable that people actually carved this road without modern engineering. The labour was mainly military men, who, in the absence of a war were give this delightful task.
We decided that the Taiwanese are very cautious people to say the very least. The first clue was the number of people wearing helmets. Admittedly rockslides are pretty common, but weather reporters all seem to be wearing them and we got given one at every corner.
A pretty red bridge, after a long walk. Beautiful, though.
Ok. Looks pretty basic in the picture, but William told us these are the best won tons in Taiwan. They are still up there with the best food I have had so far, and that’s saying a lot.. with a bit of chilli and pepper, as good as it gets. This little joint in Hualien City would be tricky to find, if ever we returned. More than tricky, to be honest.
Here’s the chef.
Here’s the joint.
Bubble Tea. An interesting bubbly fruity milky chewy experience.
We left Hualien province and took off South. The road runs along the east coast between the sea and the mountains the whole way. It is incredibly beautiful. The most amazing observation is that we saw not one single person in the water. It is hot, hot, hot. I asked William why, he replied, “it is too dangerous!” We read about the treacherous currents in Taiwan and the bed is mostly coral, not sand, but it is strange that there are no bathing pools or anything at all in hundreds of miles.
This is a shrine to the 200 people killed during the building of the road here. It is unimaginable that people actually carved this road without modern engineering. The labour was mainly military men, who, in the absence of a war were give this delightful task.
We decided that the Taiwanese are very cautious people to say the very least. The first clue was the number of people wearing helmets. Admittedly rockslides are pretty common, but weather reporters all seem to be wearing them and we got given one at every corner.
A pretty red bridge, after a long walk. Beautiful, though.
Ok. Looks pretty basic in the picture, but William told us these are the best won tons in Taiwan. They are still up there with the best food I have had so far, and that’s saying a lot.. with a bit of chilli and pepper, as good as it gets. This little joint in Hualien City would be tricky to find, if ever we returned. More than tricky, to be honest.
Here’s the chef.
Here’s the joint.
Bubble Tea. An interesting bubbly fruity milky chewy experience.
We left Hualien province and took off South. The road runs along the east coast between the sea and the mountains the whole way. It is incredibly beautiful. The most amazing observation is that we saw not one single person in the water. It is hot, hot, hot. I asked William why, he replied, “it is too dangerous!” We read about the treacherous currents in Taiwan and the bed is mostly coral, not sand, but it is strange that there are no bathing pools or anything at all in hundreds of miles.
We went on a silly little cliff walk. Helmets on!! It is the cliff walk of be careful of your baby in the basket mothers because if you are not careful your baby will fall out into the ocean. The mosaic speaks for itself.
Beautiful.
William took us to a brilliant headland, coral and limestone where the kiddies went off with the guide and did dangerous stuff. The heat got to them. All that water and no one swimming drove them to a game they called Blow Hole Roulette.
Al
Nanzhouhou was next. It was a strange, little destination by the sea, but tucked away off the main road in poor looking fields surrounded by nothing much at all. Outside, the hotel looked a bit bleak, but like many places here, inside was lovely. Modern, classy looking hotel with a French Restaurant serviced by a Michelin chef. So weird. We decided to let William find us somewhere to eat in the local village. It was a stab in the dark, but he found a spot that looked like a Coonabarabran Smash repairs joint. The boss man looked like Abdullah the Butcher. Dirty glasses. Dirty windows. The food was fabulous, tons of delicious food, cheap, cheap, cheap.
No comments:
Post a Comment