Formosa.~

Day Four: Believe it or not, we woke up even earlier today! I cant believe we actually managed to drag ourselves out of bed and be out the door by 5:45am! We skipped the bus and took a 2 hour train ride up the east coast of Taiwan to Hualien. Hualien is for sure one of my favorite cities that we have visited here in Taiwan. Its more like the comox valley in the way that it has farms and a small town, atmosphere.

We met up with a new bus driver in Hualian, and oh my gosh! HE WAS SO OLD! It looked like his grandchildren must have had children by then! I was so scared that he was going to crash when we were winding through some Mt roads in Taroko National Park. But thankfully we had him driving and not another bus driver. Many of the roads thin down to one lane which caused another tour bus to hit a car and crash into the cliff wall. Thankfully they hadnt gone off the edge (it was about a hundred meter drop on the other side of the road which they had crashed!).
This is the Swallow Grotto Trail which overlooks river. You cant see it in the picture but theres hundreds of swallows living in small caves carved into the cliff side.

Half way up the Mountain we were let off the bus to travel up ceperate roots. With our tour group, we walked through the Tunnel of Nine Turns, which is bassically a huge tunnel blasted into the side of the Mountain with some astounding outlooks. We had to wear these helmets to protect us against rocks that commonly fall onto tourists. Mine was a little too big for me so lucky none fell on me.

With limited funds and technology, carving through the extremly difficult cliff face proved to be a very dangerous task. 225 men lost their lives contructing this road way and many others were injoured for life. One of the workers is known to have said "Building the Central Cross-Island Highway was more dangerous than fighting a war. In a way you know where the enemy is, but working on a highway, no one could predict when an accident was going to happen."

After lunch we were allowed to walk up to this Pagoda set high into the hillside. Saddly Joey had a bad tummy ache and we only managed to walk up about half way. (It was funny seeing the elderly people in our tour group walk all the way to the top when Joey wasnt able to!) The views which we did see were amazing though!

The last stop of our tour was the Eternal Spring Shrine.

Joey was very pleased to play with the cold water which never stops flowing out of the mountain. That reminds me of one of the Manderin words I know! 水, Shuǐ (pronounced like sway) which means water.