A Broad Reference

During Scrabble nite last week Stella mentioned that she was headed on a tour to Hualien with friends for the weekend. The plan was to track down fireflies in the mountains and then hike Toroko Gorge the following day. Angelica and I both loved the sound of this adventure and begged to be included.

Here are a few video highlights of the trip. Check below for still shots.

Hualien & Toroko Gorge from Misty FahYing on Vimeo

第一天 First day
台北(龍山寺捷運站二號出口)集合, 開心地出發啦~~!
Taipei (Longshan Temple MRT exit 2) Picked up by our guides Amao & Crystal, happily starting our adventure la ~! We (Angelica, Stella and I) are greeted with smiles and cranberry cheesecake stuffed mianbao. Everyone is talking Chinese but I'm catching the gist of the easy stuff and Angie's filling me in on the more complex topics. After a while we get caught up in the conversation and Angie forgets to translate, but it's ok I'm happy to listen to all the jokes flying around. On the way out we pass a labyrinth of freeway ramps. I'm glad someone else is navigating.

下北宜高抵達蘇澳. (路程中可視團員狀況沿路休息)We travel towards Ilan thru the Suao tunnels of the Taipei-Ilan highway. (It's an amazing feat of engineering, but cuts right thru the aquifer layer- affecting groundwater and catchment areas!). What used to be a long, tortuous and winding trip has been massively shortened and straightened by boring directly under the mountains. I'm glad not to be carsick but I feel a little guilty about the ruined aquifer layer (the local environmentalists had a cow when the highway was built).

享受整路蘇花公路美麗的東海岸風光, 到達小房子, 先將行李放好..喝杯咖啡稍事休息, 也討論一下行程選擇 The drive along the eastern coast highway was long (4 hours total) but with beautiful scenery. We made a well planned stop at a scenic temple perched on the bluffs overlooking the elongate Hualien Bay with a fantastic view of fishing boats and (very importantly) toilet facilities. After another hour we arrived at the B&B cottage, dropped off our luggage, made necessary pit-stops and refreshments. The cottage is an old style farm village cottage, with raised platform bedrooms and hard mattresses. The rooms are open onto the wooden rafters, so no ceilings. The roof is tiled the old fashioned way (after a typhoon 3 years ago destroyed the aluminum roof). Everything was decorated in a rustic Ikea style, bold colors and simple furniture. The backyard is fully planted as a kitchen garden. If you walk down the road, you can see other cottages built in the same style but in different states of repair and conditions.

We discussed our plan of action for the day and agreed that since I was short on time in Taiwan our goal was try to fit as much in as possible in a sort of "ultra speedy crack mission impossible ". Crystal jokingly promised that we would get to a site and then they would say "see that trail? you have 30 minutes- run, run run (pao, pao ,pao)". After a confusing conversation about manta rays I determine from small concrete reliefs in the garden that the sunfish or Mola mola is the mascot of Hualien. Crystal asks me to draw the difference between a manta ray and a sunfish- she laments that instead of marine biology Taiwan has "Seafood biology".

Impromptu stop at the beach. No swimming, coz it's a steep pebbly beach (like Monastery Beach in Big Sur) with a dramatic drop off and a strong long shore current and hidden rips. It's a working beach coz the substantial drop off allows the fishing boats right up onto the beach to land their catch. Still it was nice to rest on the beach after the long drive. The pebbles look like a mix of marble and limestone, all Jackson Pollocky. Everyone is armed with a camera, I feel somewhat redundant with my little point & shoot when everyone else has massive DSLRs. The breeze starts picking up, and the air force base down at the end of the bay had planes flying overhead, so it was interesting but a little noisy.

阿美土產午餐~ 超級推薦的山野美食~!! Lunch- Amao and Crystal recommend the local seafood and we're all enthused to drive down into Hualian harbor and buy fresh fish from the local fishermen. They have a kaleidescope of fish- flying fish, octopus & squid, flat fish with bio-luminescent skin (bacteria in the skin cells), all kinds of coral reef fish; I even found a guy skinning (ever so casually) an entire bin of poisonous puffer fish! We didn't risk it ourselves considering the conditions, but I saw other people ordering it by the jin (Taiwanese measure for 600g). After Crystal chose our fish, they cooked it for us. Each dish tasted very different. We started with some incredibly fresh tuna and salmon sashimi, followed by fish ball veg soup, salt and pepper oysters, eggs noodles and mounds of fresh steamed shrimp. Wow. fantabulous.

松園別館~ 感受遍地舖滿松針與徐徐清風吹來的靜謐 On the way over to Tsung Yuen Museum we stop at a roadside stand to pick up some thirst quenching stewed winter melonade (it's got a kind of caramelly melony depth to it, good pucker factor & brain freeze for sure). The museum is atop the only hill in the city, surrounded by trees and covered with pine needles and a quiet breeze blows slowly thru the tree tops (Qing feng dian). It's more of an artsy craft center, complete with drumming circle (occupied by a class of drummers pounding away), display galleries for art, poetry and classrooms (jewelry making, etc). The museum store has a full selection of postcards and other knickknacks. You can see the red bridge we crossed on the way into town. The roof had been slightly altered for skylights. I like the impromptu poems on slabs of 2x4. Many of them are wild running style, which has a lot of energy, but the folks who are supposed to be able to read the characters complain that these are illegible. I can only make out a a handful of characters like ren, shui, bu, zhong, da - enough to feel like my studying is starting to have some relevance.

We spot some fallow fields with a cover crop of cosmos, sunflowers, marigolds and daisies. There are other flowers I can't identify. It's so pretty we whip out the cameras and start snapping more pics. We all have cameras and we're using them, so it's tough to get a good shot of someone with out them looking at their cameras. On the plus side between us all we've generated about 700+ pics over the weekend. Amao thinks we prolly have taken more pics than any other group they've had. It's so photogenic, as is the derelict cottage and old man with a twig broom.

林田山的舊宿舍... We head on over to the Lin Tianshan the old quarters of a logging village. It's got all the original equipment and possessions of the people who lived there during the lumber heyday. The highlight for me is the constructed art section where huge models of insect lie in wait.

"跑跑跑"的散步完後, 黑心團特色的"吃吃吃"時候到了, 來吃個特別的鮮韮菜臭豆腐..攤子旁就放著大大把的新鮮韮菜.. Amao asks us if we're ready for the most challenging part of our trip "the black heart of our Mission" , "Chi Chichi" to eat the fresh leek special stinky tofu ..

上場囉, 為了讓切丁的韮菜方便食用, 會將炸好的臭豆腐中間挖一個洞, 若要加辣就會把辣椒醬放進洞裡, 再把切丁韮菜鋪放上去., 這攤的臭豆腐真是有夠臭, 把車停在旁邊門一開, 感覺就像被臭味劈頭打中的感覺一樣, 也有普通加泡菜的炸臭豆腐, 加泡菜的話則是將臭豆腐切成三角型後再炸..外國朋友都讚不絕口, 說外皮酥內心軟, 又臭又夠味, 整個就是一個決配~!! 放着外帶裝盤中..臭豆腐上鋪滿滿新鮮切丁的韮菜..
韮菜是要用多少切多少, 才不會因為切好後放太久而縮掉..
We all agreed to share just a couple of servings coz we were still full from lunch. We stopped at an open air stand that did both original pickled veg as well as special leek chou doufu. The smell is a wall that splits your head open. Good things it's outdoors and has good ventilation. The doufu is cut into triangles and then holes cut into the middle to increase the spicy sauce diffusion.
Leeks are cut fresh and then sweated slightly to enhance the flavor. Another version is ladled with vinegared veg- cabbage, carrots onion etc. I like the pickled cabbage version better, I think that the vinegar adds a bite and clarity to the taste that the leek doesn't. But it's all delicious. It was a case of everyone eats it or no one eats, the smell was that strong. Crisp inner skin soft, smelly tender insides Gou Wei! The car reeks afterwards and we have to roll all the windows down for air.

吃完臭豆腐點心, 又轉戰一定要推薦給外國朋友的"豐春冰果室", 大家用了超級清涼的甘蔗冰, 快六點了, 準備來去鯉魚潭看螢火蟲囉.. 豐春冰果室~ ㄧ路搭車, 來去吃個冰消暑吧~! We hardly have room but for the famous Feng-chun fruit ice we'll make space. The ubiquitous shaved ice is replaced with frozen sugar cane ice. It's juiced, condensed and frozen in bright orange pipes that line the walls. The industrial set up indicates that they're ready for the sweltering summer demands for ice, ice, ice -Xiaoshu ~!

夜間活動(還有體力嗎? 逛夜市、休息、來去鯉魚潭享受寧靜夜景跟找螢火蟲?) We continue our drive up into the hills directly behind Hualian to Guangye Shi, where Liyu (Carp) Lake sits in a bowl between two ranges. As we pull into the park I see a sign for the Hualien 2008 Triathlon. We just missed it by a couple of hours... Oh well we'll just have to enjoy a quiet night searching for fireflies. The frogs come out in their brass section complemented by the cicadas and crickets string section- an evensong symphony as the twilight fades completely from blue to black. Groups of nature lovers congregate near the trail head but we ignore them and press on around the lake and up into a gully as small sparks of light start floating around. I try to film the queer green pulsating strobes. It's so faint that it's not making any impression on my camera screen (which is so backlit that it's killing my night vision), I switch off the technology and decide to rely on my memories of the event. As my eyes gradually acclimate to the dark, it seems all of a sudden a swarm of fireflies descend from the canopy, flitting around with steady beams or pulses tracking the path. Amazing. We grow quiet as we absorb this kufee (cool feeling) glad that we were able to leave the masses of people behind. The best side for spotting fireflies is the east side in damp brush covered places. We circle the lake and climb into the car after a good long hike (estimates range from 5-10 km) It was dark and it took a long time but so worth the effort and blisters.

七星潭(帶著自強夜市採買的美食,來去七星潭吹風吃美食) It's so late all the restaurants in the area are closed. Luckily the local night market Qixing Tan is well stocked with local delicacies. We can't eat the BBQ, there's a 70 minute wait, so we walk down and grab a variety of Taiwanese night market staples- coffin bread stuffed with lamb stir fry, oyster omelet (but with the locally fresh oysters it's lifted to a different plane of being), mango/watermelon/papaya smoothies and rice congee. I'm so stuffed from the day, I can only sip on a mango smoothie and taste Angie's "dead bread".

回小房子休息 Back to the cottage to rest. We pass out as if struck on the head with a baseball bat.

第二天 The next day
七星潭看日出!! We skipped the optional visit to see the 5 am sunrise and local fish market by simply sleeping thru till 7am. Amao got up early, but decided against waking us up.

享用小房子的田園風有機特色早餐.. We wake up to an organic breakfast of wild veggies (fern tips, sweet potato greens, bamboo shoots, seaweed) gathered and cooked by Amao's mom.. Delicious.

今天我們有一整天的時間逛太魯閣國家公園, 首先到達的當然是不能免俗一定要"到此一遊"的, 橫貫公路入口牌樓.. Today we have a whole day planned around the Taroko National Park, we stop to take the typical tourist pics at the cross-island highway entrance decorated archway to the Taroko and buy the casual 7-11 picnic lunch for later .. We take several different paths along paved walkways designed to exhibit the natual beauty of the rock formations and wild gorges. Amao drops us off, and we walk prolly an easy 30 minutes. He picks us up and drops us off again. This time the trail cuts thru the mountain, and the tunnels are pitch black with no lighting. We make our way up the trail to the Crystal Waterfall Caves, where we don plastic rain gear and wade into the dark tunnel. About 5 minutes in the sounds of the waterfall are so deafening, you can hardly think. But the light is so bad, it's impossible to take good pics and I'm afraid of getting my camera wet. Still it's exhilarating to stand under the torrential cascade and feel the pounding force. Ack my raincoat sprang a leak and I can feel the cold water rushing in with it's icy cold fingers.

On our way out we pass a convoy of buses. I'm so glad that our tour is special, instead of being herded on and off those massive tankers. They have to stop and buy things from the "tourist shops" specially designated as part of the tour. We're off in search of a wild onsen- a mineral spring in a river that has been made into a bathing pool. It's deserted and rustic. We soak our feet, and wish that we had brought our bathing suits. The water is hot and smelly. The views are great.

The mists start to roll in, it's getting cold and we're all tired.

晚餐-南方澳最新鮮的富美活海鮮 dinner - Nanfang Ao fresh live seafood-rich and tasty plus crunchy fried frogs' legs. What a treat!

回到台北溫暖的家..(龍山寺捷運站) Taipei to return to the warmth of home .. This time dropped off outside our lane since it was on the way back to Longshan Temple MRT for everyone else.