More From Hualien

I guess I am losing my power from midnight till 6am tonight. That means no air-conditioning.... not sure I can make it so I'm working on a back up plan. I have 4 hours to go;) There's been a message in the elevator for the past week, but I can't read Chinese. Finally figured out the date referred to tomorrow so I scanned it and sent it to Kirsten to be translated. Could be a long 6 hours without my AC!

More pictures have been uploaded for this past Saturday's trip up the river in Hualien as well as the Whale/Dolphin watching trip. As I said before, we didn't see any whales and only a couple of dolphins. Definitely better dolphin viewing in Naples Florida!!

As for Saturday - you'll see our group in our suits (I took my own as my size is not normally stocked in Taiwan) and safety helmets (I got a "special" one in larger size) and also life vests (again, I get the special one that only gets used every 5 years probably). But all was well as we headed out early in order to beat the other groups that were following us. It paid off to go early (we were on the water by 8am) as we got to do everything and made it to the top where other groups didn't make it up there.

It was quite the adventure. We did a lot of climbing, some floating in the river, jumping off the falls, swimming behind waterfalls, climbing water falls, rope climbing some of the higher rocks, some cliff jumping (one at 2 meters and one at about 5 meters), and of course just swimming. My favorite part was the swimming since the water was as pure and clean as any water I've ever been in. Fresh water and at some points the water was very deep (thus the cliff jumping) which is amazing. It was so cool in the water, and so peaceful up in the mountains. We did see a poisonous snake (one of the last pictures) which was stuck in the water at the top on a branch. The snake can't swim and it looked like he'd been there a while on a branch that fell but there wasn't enough current to move him down river to escape. Our instructor let some folks take pictures, but he ultimately freed the critter to go back to being a poisonous snake in the forest. He really was an ugly thing.

As for Sunday - everyone was taking some anti-sickness medicine, but I think it made everyone overly tired. We were up early again, but the rest of the gang hung out on the top of the boat. I went to the front in hopes of seeing some dolphins following the bow of the boat which is one of their favorite things to do at times. The dolphins we saw though were feeding, meaning they were more interested in following the fish (which we were scarring away I'm sure) than they were in entertaining the people on the boat. It was still beautiful water and wonderful to be out on the Pacific Ocean!!

Then we had the only bad part of the trip - the return to Taipei which had us hitting traffic. Just like in Chicago, the worst part is the fact that they split everyone for a toll booth, then there's a huge bottleneck getting everyone back into 2 lanes. That seems to be a poor design around the world!!!

We did get to go through the new tunnel which is now Taiwan's longest. It was 14.9 km long (about 9 miles) which is actually pretty amazingly long! There were a couple of long tunnels, but 9 miles is a little rediculous! They even rebroadcast the radio inside the tunnel (as well as having cell phone towers), BUT it gets a little freaky when they interrupt the radio to announce an accident and at what mile marker. A little too science fiction like for me!

Anyway - hope you enjoy the pictures! Have a good Tuesday!!