This past weekend, Bekah, Kristin, Kaitlyn and I went to visit Taroko Gorge for a few days.
Since we had no English Village (every couple of months, we get two weeks off from EV), Bekah and I had an extra long weekend. On Fridays, we usually do EV together in the morning at Sanmin or Lingzhou and then have the afternoon off (Fulbright asks all of our schools to give us Friday afternoons off, I suppose for the 
purpose of better engaging in cultural activities or exploring Taiwan? This is not to say that I have not spent the occasional Friday afternoon in the office at school doing work - the delights of newspaper editing). Therefore, we were both able to leave right after our classes Thursday afternoon. Kristin and Kaitlyn, who both have EV Tuesday/Thursday and therefore class on Friday, were to join us Friday afternoon/evening. I was very excited to go, as Taroko Gorge is reputed to be one of the most beautiful spots in Taiwan with gorgeous mountains and scenery.
The plan was to take the HSR (high-speed rail) up to Taipei, and then switch trains to go down to Hualien. Sophie (an older lady whom I tutor in English who also lives in our apartment building - she is an angel and deserves her own blog posting at some point...) drove Bekah and I to the HSR station. The HSR is amazing. It takes one between Kaohsiung and Taipei in under an hour and a half, a trip which takes about seven hours by normal rail. We arrived in Hualien, the nearest large city to the gorge, fairly late and opted to go straight to bed once we reached our hostel.
The next morning, we woke up early so that we could maximize our
gorge visiting time. Bekah and I both love to hike, so we were pretty excited to get started. :) Since Taroko is about an hour's drive inland from Hualien and since we had been told that public transportation within the gorge 
was fairly nonexistent, we had planned to rent scooters for the weekend. Because Bekah and I both have our Taiwanese drivers licenses, we were able to rent for super cheap - 250 NTD a day! This is about 8 USD, which is an awesome deal. It turned out that renting scooters was the way to go, for besides the convenience, we had beautiful views riding along in the open air.
The biggest problem with the scooters was that the weather was freezing cold! When I say "freezing," we are probably talking about mid- to high-50s. There are two reasons to account for my sounding like a wimp here. For 
one, we are all clearly spoiled living in Kaohsiung, where I still traipse around in sundresses and shorts (not literally, I did graduate to pants a few months ago, but still...). Secondly, driving on a scooter with the wind rushing past you drops the air temperature significantly. I ended up wearing almost the same thing every day up there, which involved all of the "winter weather" clothing which I possess here in Taiwan: short-sleeve shirt, long-sleeve shirt, sweatshirt, jacket and scarf. My hands wanted gloves, for the first time since the end of last winter in NC! Anyways, once Kristin and Kaitlyn arrived, we could snuggle with them on the backs of our scooters - the body heat definitely helped. :)
The travel books do not exaggerate. Taroko Gorge is beautiful. The only road in runs right along the main gorge, so you are driving along with mountain cliffs shooting up above you and the river slicing through the marble rock below you. Chemicals from the marble have turned the water an exquisite turquoise blue color. Everything looked so pristine and natural, a big change from the relatively polluted city of Kaohsiung. All weekend, Bekah kept taking deep breaths of air and making exclamations over the air quality.
The four of us spent Friday and Saturday nights
at an aboriginal village up inside the gorge. That is, the hotel is on the site of an old village and is today run by aboriginals. We stayed in little cabins which are nestled inside a valley about 5-10 minutes up from the main gorge. It was so beautiful and relaxing. We loved every minute of it, aside from the coldness factor... Apparently, they do not heat buildings in Taiwan... At least the beds had electric blankets, so we survived. :) I have to say, though, it felt so good to finally feel "cold." We had breakfast included with our stay, as well as free evening entertainment.
Every evening, they put on a show for their guests, singing and dancing and playing musical instruments. One of the guys, in particular, had a beautiful voice, and we all fell in love with his singing. On the first night, they even gave us nature trail around the site in the dark. We were looking for owls, but I do not believe we ever found any. Tragic.
Favorite moments: splashing my feet in the chilly water, eating toast stolen from breakfast for lunch next to a pond three hours up a mountain, 
posing on suspension bridges which could have been taken out of a kung fu movie and doing my taijichuan on top of a cliff overlooking the gorge.
Another amusing side story is about the shopping. Kaohsiung has zero cultural/touristy shopping, so we were all fairly excited to find a place with lovely indigenous Taiwanese handcrafts. The most funny item which we all ended up purchasing, though, was the wine. On the first evening, we were served their local wine - made and bottled by the aboriginals - in these tiny little pig cups. When I say "pig cups," I do not mean that they had pigs painted on them. No, they were in the shape of a pig, and you had to drink out of the snout. The wine was quite sweet and had an unusual tangyness to it which we all liked. For some reason, each of us decided that it was the perfect "gift" idea. By the end of the weekend, the four of us had accumulated ten bottles of the wine along with about that many of tiny wine bottles and two bottles of it in liquor form. Haha I swear none of us are alcoholics! It was just so unusual and packaged so lovely. :)
While we were up in the mountains hiking, we passed a college professor with his students who were out catching and documenting birds for a class. They let Bekah hold one of the birds before releasing it.
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