ahhh! my computer has filled up and is not letting me empty it onto my external hard drive. meaning no room for any of the new pictures. this was the lone survivor of the saturday trip madness. dubiqi.anyways...we headed to the bus station to see if we can take a bus to taroko, the national park here in hualien. [think yosemite in hawaii]. admidst the crazy parade, we find out that a bus is leaving in 5 minutes and we are shuffled to a line where a nice man kept telling up to wait one beat [weird english translation]. good thing we had a parade and a shiesty taxi driver to keep us amused while we waited. the bus came and we boarded without knowing what stop to get off on. we stayed on until the bus was stopped indefinitely. good thing it was at the visitor's center in taroko. we already knew what hike we wanted to go on but found out that it was an unwalkable distance from where we were. the woman told us we should rent a scooter. a quick phone call later, a man picked us up from the visitor's center and took us down the hill to his scooter shop. we signed our name, took a poorly-aimed picture, and jeff handed over his US license. $15 US dollars later, we were laughing our heads off as we tried to figure out how to drive a scooter up a mountain. once we got back up to taroko, we did a few of the hikes and finished with the baiyang trial. if anyone ever goes to taroko, do the baiyang trial. it was a series of tunnels--some pitch black and all amazing. they were dripping with water and at least one had a bat. i felt like indiana jones! the last tunnel had a water curtain [when spring water falls through cracks in the tunnel] that you could walk around or right under. of course, we played in it and looked like a bunch of crazy americans. imagine a dark tunnel with a thin waterfall in it. it was AMAZING. we scooted around some more and then had to head home after spending a good six hours in the park. our train was an hour later than expected so we backtracked and ate delicious beef noodle stew and then some disgusting mogi. found some puppies near the train, which i tried to get to come home with me, and then finally got on the train at 810. felt more like 1110. we took a taxi from the train station to the bus station and biked our way home. from the fact that i dont remember falling asleep [or what time or in what clothing], i'd say we had a good day. :]
