Back to Borneo...

see ya in a couple of weeks!

School Dinner, LiJi Village Bike...

Formosan Macaque that was none to pleased to see us so close to it....it made a loud and vocal exit soon after this picture!

We are winding down things around here...Crystal is already done her classes and I have one more week to go. It is a long overdue break that is approaching, and while we have a lot to do before we hit Borneo soil, our minds are, um, already on vacation (sometimes!).

Friday was a delightful school dinner to celebrate the end of the semester and the Chinese New Year vacation that approaches; dancing, rather excellent food, prizes (we took home 500NT ($30 CDN) in gift certificates for a bread/cake shop...) and overall a nice goodbye atmosphere. Perhaps 100+ people, including teachers, staff, admin, volunteers, local officials, etc all sat down to a goodbye dinner and evening. Afterwards we met other foreigners - a rare occasion for us here - at a pub and chatted about the random things that inhabit conversations at pubs. Life, travel, life, stuff, and..life.

Saturday we - finally - went to Taitung and rented folding bikes. We had wanted to try them out for so long and finally got the chance. After a day and a half of riding through the mountains, along the coast, through the forest....they totally officially rock! If I had the money I would buy one today. But, lacking said funds, I am happy that we found a nice cheap place to rent them in Taitung (about 2 hours train south) and found some really cool places to poke around in the backwoods and coastal areas of the city.

We also came upon a surreal camping area....totally going back there! Nothing of dramatic mention, just a good couple of days on rented bikes checking out a totally new part of this island. Every weekend....something new to see. Crazy.

The view from the mountain road.

Scenery along our bike through the mountains; a palmy day for a ride (get it...palm tree...palmy......)

[UPDATE: Found some stuff here and here!]

"The Taitung Melange" is a geological formation that is, at least as of 2003 and from what I can gather on online journal searches, a rather curious unknown artifact of the past 50 or so million years. It arranges itself between two main mountain belts - the Coastal (~60mya) and the Central (~600 mya) ranges. It is a consolidated/weak massive structure that is both highly impermeable and prone to rill wash turn gullying - it kinda looks like a mini mountain range. The whole river bed in this area has high walls of rilled and gullied walls, sometimes sheer, and then there is the inland section that looks like a foreign pinnacled karst formation. Karst it totally is not, but from a distance, perhaps is seems so. Anyway, its a cool oddity and this was our first chance to see it, touch it, wonder about it.....and sent me on a day long perusal of internet resources trying to figure out how/when it formed. Still work to be done...

At night we found a weekend hotspot; live music of all genres and serviced with a pub and....wonderfully....a fire pit outside. It was so freaking cold....were it not for the fire we may not have made it through the whole show. Bought the CD.....something about a Chinese old white chicken. Homework...homework....

Air force in full practice mode; it was an endless parade of (we presume) take off/landing practice. Cool to see as we wandered along the coast and spied our new camping spot for future jaunts to Taitung.

Of note today (Monday) is that we had snow in the mountains last night. On the way to work I bike directly towards the mountains for the first few minutes and I always occupy myself by searching for new landslides, features and just generally enjoying the view while I pedal. Today, the view was white. Snow! I have never, I don't think at least, seen snow in Taiwan at such a low elevation. In the mountains (alpine) it snows every year and even some of the lower places on extremely cold days. But, to see snow at something like 600masl was a dramatic and totally unexpected morning sight. So weird...so weird.

Catch-Up

Like a good veggie burger, we need a little catch-up here. Get it? Hmmmm.....um, ok. Moving on.

Camera died....laboured over a new one, finally picked it up in Taipei. So far its splendid - Panasonic Lumix FZ100.


So here is some catch-upy stuff....

Christmas/New Year squid being prepared on the grill...skewered, not diced, please.

New Years spent at home, from our balcony we could see the festivities the city put on right down the street. Bands, folks with speeches, and a whack load of fireworks that shook our house. Pretty neat, overall. Then on the Saturday we biked to Taroko Gorge again, hung out in TienShiang for the night, then biked home Sunday. Camera actually died three pictures into that trip, so we have no proof. Just trust us.

Ok, this needs to be a book-length analysis on its own, but ill spare you the details and sum up the bulk of it with "Taiwan publishers like to make weird, sometimes elaborate, school stuff". Rarely can you buy a regular notebook. Nope. You need to get said regular notebook with a English-Chinese mixed statement on it, something along the lines of "Love - it is the dish of a cat that milk spills. You freedom. Cheer!" or "Can you breath when. Make tomorrow Diamond love." ... I could go on. Perfectly improper and wrong English phrases that always deal with love, bling and money. Its horrendous. So, imagine the glee that my fatigued eyes allowed me to see when I came across these notebooks: quirky, yet absolutely funny. The best thing Tofu has given us in decades is none other than...."Tofu Rock!"

East meets west meets...steamed snails on the left, popcorn on the right! A New Years festive treat for all (except, um, those of us who don't really go for the steamed snails...)

New Years eve as seen from our third floor porch. This area is usually empty save for a few cars and a few people hanging out by the fountain. But this night, it swelled to immense proportions. This is the back of the crowd - to the left of this pic the people get thicker and thicker and there is a huge stage worthy of a mega rock show. Good times - people of all ages, listening to music of all genres, together. Nobody hurt, robbed, anything. People deal with crowds here better, somehow....

The last photo....part way along our January 1 2011 journey to Taroko Gorge National Park our camera died. We buried it under the banana trees, said a goodbye and laid a stone on top of it with the words "thanks for being there all these years" on top of it*. Then we continued up through the astoundingly amazingly unbelievably wonderful Taroko Gorge....slowly and peacefully.

*Um...the truth is I tried to do everything, save CPR, to get it to work again and didn't let up for the next five days. Finally we gave up, and bought a new child....camera...a new camera.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Death to the Camera

Slowly, over the past week....we lost a good travel partner, good keeper of memories and excellent insect capturing friend.

Now, off to the Camera store to wind our way through the mysterious trials of purchasing a piece of technology in Taipei. No pictures of new years here, no pictures of our school stuff or the exciting campaign to keep us awake via non-stop fireworks outside our balcony for the last few days while the locals celebrate one of their gods birthday/death day/whatever.

Its been a fun few days in the mix of christmas, new years and the celebrations that seem to pop up unannounced around the city for various reasons and people, but I think it is time to settle back down, clean the streets and get back to the regular steps of a regular life, Hualien. Get to it!