If you’re a back­packer you already know that plans, which are kept to a min­i­mum for starters, change very often and very quickly. This was the case as soon as we tried to leave Taipei towards Hualien.
Upon arrival to the bus sta­tion we were told that there are no buses to Hualien, on the east coast of Tai­wan. This seemed odd, but a friendly young lady who spoke Eng­lish approached us and con­firmed what we thought we were hear­ing. She sug­gested that instead we visit Lu Tond, which is on the way to Hualien, and besides being her city it is very nice and has admit­tedly the best night mar­ket in Tai­wan. Ok, fair enough!

How­ever once we arrived we were not very sure we had made the best deci­sion; at first glance it is not one of those oooooh-aaaaaahh cities, so we began to walk to the train sta­tion and con­tinue our way. Not even a block later a black sedan honked at us and pulled over. The driver’s door opened and …out came the lady from Taipei! Appar­ently she had felt guilty for not get­ting on our bus (?) so she had waited 20 min­utes for us to arrive. She said that her work day was over, had a free day, and wanted to drive us around and show all there is to see (??). But alas, before that she wanted to invite us to lunch so we could taste some local cui­sine. “Is that OK with you?”” she enquired (???).

The sight­see­ing tour took us to the city park where chil­dren fed big red fish in a pond, to the pecu­liar farm-bars where you could feed domes­tic ani­mal while sip­ping a tea, the plan­ta­tions where japan­ese pears are cul­ti­vated (excel­lent stuff-we bought 2kg) and the Yuntzu Tem­ple, one of the most impor­tant reli­gious build­ings in Tai­wan that receives thou­sands of vis­i­tors per year. She dropped us close to the hotel late that after­noon and sug­gested we join a what watch­ing tour the fol­low­ing day, assert­ing that every time she had been on one she had seen both whales and dol­phins. Awe­some! That night we tasted local cui­sine again in the night mar­ket and went to sleep early for next day’s tour.

We woke up early to cath the bus and train to the har­bour, and were there at 8:45 am, with enough time left as it would start at 9am.
By 9.15 we (and a few more tourists) were out in the ocean try­ing not to fall because of the medium surf. Three hours later we were back on land, with­out hav­ing seen any ani­mals, with 1600NT less in our pock­ets, and com­pletely drenched because of the waves. We were not lucky this time, but we did man­age to get back 1000NT, which sur­prised me quite a bit.

Two hours of train travel later we were in Hualien, a medium sized city which would be used as our base camp to explore the Taroko Gorge and other nearby attrac­tions. Hualien is quite man­age­able, and once more Tai­wanese peo­ple proved to be out­most friendly. I was try­ing to ask the recep­tion­ist where could I find an adap­tor for my net­book when a hotel guest popped by and told me to fol­low him. By the time I real­ized where I was Daw­son (that was his name) had dri­ven me to two stores and was ask­ing about plans for din­ner. We had none, of course, so he sug­gested we go to the night mar­ket and get some cheap eats. We did. He drove us to it and again invited us to some deli­cious local meal, although this time we did man­age to buy him a local dessert he said he liked.

The next few days were spent dri­ving through the Taroko Gorge on a scooter(best way to do it) which is quite nice, but if you have been in Norway’s fjords or the Grand Canyon in the US it doesn’t quite match up; on a rainy day we went to visit abo­rig­i­nal Ami peo­ple, which was a bad idea because the typhoon rains were too much for the rain­coats– we did have an exquis­ite abo­rig­i­nal meal though; I also rode a bike along the Chichisan scenic area, about 30 km over­all, and was busy for 6 hours star­ing at the surf and the great coastal views; and we enjoyed the water danc­ing fes­ti­val in a nearby lake, where peo­ple from dif­fer­ent tribes got together to per­form a tra­di­tional dance. On the way back we bought the 3 largest man­gos we had ever seen (not uncom­mon in Tai­wan we later real­ized), at a whop­ping 1.5 kg each!

We enjoyed our stay in Hualien very much, helped as well by the great hotel deal we found, but it was time to move on and I des­per­ately needed to surf a bit…

Pil­grims in Taroko Gorge