El Castillo

Chichen Itza, Mexico. Taken by M'roy

Around Hualien City

As I had mentioned in a previous post, I was here in Hualien to meet with some distant relatives. And, everyone turned out to be really nice. My second (third?) cousin showed me around the (almost) two days that I was in town. The town is relatively large with a very, very, long main street where all of the stores and action are. It's in many ways quite similar to some of the busy streets in Taipei; lots of stores and boutiques with lots of people. I did a few family type get togethers and meals. But, for the most part, I was exploring the city and surrounding countryside.

The pix here, though, are a mixture of the places that I was taken to and shown. I've no idea what most of the places were. But, they were interesting non-the-less. One was a Japanese shrine and the other was an old military lookout converted into an art gallery.

It's also an interesting observation, and it's one that I've seen many times before, and it's that when one lives in a city, one usually does not visit the places tourists visit. So, some of the places we went to were totally new to my second cousin as well. The irony of it all. LOL

Taroko National Park

This was my last day in Hualien and my second cousin took me to Taroko National Park. The place is gorgeous. The pix do not do it justice and the sense of depth and scale is totally lost in the two dimensions of the images. The Taroko Gorge, where most of them were shot, is HUGE! The little stones and pebbles in the pix that you see are not little stones and pebbles, they are GIGANTIC boulders. This is a place that you can take days to explore. The path carved into the cliffs that we were on, and as seen in the pix, is around 4.5 km long. We maybe covered about half a click ("click" = kilometer; Canadian slang for those who are wondering what I just said with that world)! Like I said, a few days exploring would be great. But, I did not have that amount of time. Still, though, it was great to see even the small part of it that I did see. There are such wonderful things in nature to behold, especially in this part of the world it seems.

After that, it was lunch at a Chinese style BBQ restaurant I found on my first day here. Probably the best meal I've had during the entire vacation. Now, don't get me wrong, though, the food in Taiwan has been very good. It's just that Taiwanese food and Chinese food, Cantonese in my case, is just different and I grew up with Cantonese style food and find that best fits my tastes now. Anyways, a bit of a rush with some in-town exploring and meeting some more relatives before catching my train back late in the evening and that was that. Two days came and went too quickly.

The train ride back to Taipei was uneventful as there was nothing to see outside in the dark. I just watched a couple of movies. I almost missed my stop because I remembered the time of arrival incorrectly by being 10 minutes later than it actually was. Good thing I can move fast when I have to.