Down in Tainan: Hualien - a breath of fresh air

After Green Island, I was planning on heading to Lotus Island, but that meant I would have to stay the night in Taidong again. Unable to bare another boring night there, I chose to continue traveling up the coast with Ryan and Graeme and head for Hualien.

I had heard a lot of good things about Hualien and was not disappointed when I got there. The city is clean, traffic is light, people are friendly, art sculptures dotted around the city, mountains to one side and the pacific ocean to the other. I can even recommend a good Youth Hostel to stay at 'Formosa Backpackers Hostel', the owner is a cool surfer girl.

Near Hualien, there is a river which holds world white water rafting competitions, so me and the other guys were keen to try it out.
However, nothing is ever that simple in Taiwan, we could not just get a raft and paddle downstream by ourselves.
We joined a mass group of over 100 Taiwanese people wanting to go rafting. However, I am sure that some people there did not quite understand what white water rafting was all about, with many dressed inappropriately. Some women were wearing high heels, some guys refused to be parted with their mobile phone's (they would soon learn what happens when you mix water and electrical gadgets), but the winner for most inappropriately dressed, went to a girl dressed head to toe in denim.
Then, in the stinking heat, we had to sit through four safety meetings which seemed to go on for ages, (about how to correctly behave and maintain safety) all in Chinese and all pointless (as you will soon find out).

Unfortunately the rapids that day were not that strong as it had not rained in a while. Still, it did not take away from the experience as there was plenty to see and do. Paddling down the valley with mountains on either side more than made up for the lack of rapids.
And apart from the views, there was the non-stop water fight which kept us busy for the most part! Us foreigners who did not understand a word during the safety meetings, realised that jumping around a boat throwing buckets of water at the other rafts classifies as unsafe behavior. However, the Taiwanese who understood all that was said in the safety meetings seemed to think this was fine, and the 'safety attendants' who gave the speeches, actually encouraged such behavior. They were aboard speed boats, and when they saw a raft, at full speed, they would drive towards that raft and in the last fraction of a second, would turn the speedboat so that a wave of water would fall upon the raft.
At first, it was really annoying having people throw buckets of cold water over us. However, only after we prised the buckets from the clutches of another raft that we began to have fun and got into the swing of things.

Just north of Hualien is Taroko Gorge, Taiwan's number one attraction. Its a huge gorge with marble cliffs that tower over you. There are loads of hikes trails throughout the area, but as we were short on time, we just rode our scooters along the road and saw the main sights, which were all really impressive. And I have to say, driving around the gorge on a scooter was a quite an adrenaline rush; some of the twists and turns the road makes are not for the faint hearted, especially when you have idiot coaches and car drivers speeding along the narrow road.

Next stop, Taipei

Marble sculptures around Hualien