Ok, ill get this off my chest right away - we both saw our first live, in the wild, sea turtle this weekend!
We ... were ... totally ... amazed!
It was a shock, totally unexpected and, while we only got a minute of its time, it was an exceptionally well spent minute.
There were other weird critters that crossed out path this weekend on Green Island - we spent a large portion of our time in or by the ocean, so a lot of the surprises were oceanic. Wet and plushy and slimy.
Ill get to those in time but first the weekend itself - Green Island! Yes, the same island we have ventured to (by our count) seven times now during our time in Taiwan, and each time seems to spring something different on us. Nothing comes to you, lie needs to be searched out, fought for, discovered. Tour buses and programmed itineraries only lick the surface of a glorious lollipop, leaving the inner peanut taffy surprise for those willing to bite down and find it. I'm sure that peanut taffy lollipops exist somewhere....I'm sure of it.
The main flying fish species is a mainstay of the islanders diet - from their head muscle ("sea mushrooms") to the bones for fertilizer. Here the catch from the recent flying fish festival dry in the morning sun.
Friday night we whipped down to Taitung, grabbed a cheap hotel and scuttled over to Taitung's cultural park/concert stage and listened to a cool band (who was apparently VERY popular...by the reaction of the crowd) while eating magi sipping a malty pop. Taiwan, for all its glory and all its ecological amazement and outdoor adventures, lacks culture. It has the old culture - the tea shops, the brush calligraphy, the "Chinese" of old, but lacks a place to hang out and listen to music, check out art, etc. Many townships are doing a lot to try to remedy this - turning old train stations into art galleries, old breweries into concert halls, etc. But, overall, there is a lack of this sort of this still. So, we know that a trip to Taitung will allows us to be a part of the growing art-culture movement for a night, and we try not to miss it when we are in town.
Taiwan moves off into the distance as our ferry...um...ferries us to the island. Once there, we poke around the tide pools and take a little morning swim.
Saturday we woke later than we planned, despite three alarms, and realized that our ferry was leaving in 30 minutes, and we were a good 15min drive from the terminal, plus the morning teeth brishing, breakfast, coffee, waiting for a taxi, etc. We skipped everything except waiting for the taxi....and made it there in time. We boarded, settled on the back railing and took the ~45 minute ferry ride from Taiwan proper to the little volcanic gem of Green Island.
While the island can be super touristy at times, there are places that people simply don't go (because their pre-planned tour bus itineraries don't allow them to). So, while the "tourist" spots are crammed with people, the real highlights of the island are vacant. Which is why we come back.
Goats. Everywhere. This little dude was a pet for a tea shop, and aside from befriending us it gave eating my clothes a hearty go, too.
Saturday we split our time between hiking along the coast and checking out tide pools, and taking a glass bottom boat (with no actual glass bottom, just windows) out to the deeper reefs - eels, crabs, fish, fish, fish, crabs, eels, amazing rock coral and some pretty neat land plants that face the worst of the islands wind, salt water intrusion and desiccation and come out on top - the flourish. Life...amazing stuff. It was on the boat that we saw a slow, majestic sea turtle going about its business with no concern to the world above. Along with the turtle were the regular reef compadres, the reef itself, and a giant blue vista of ocean. Stunning stuff. We capped the day off with a nice hike partway across the island - hearing barking deer and finding three new bird species (for us, not new to science....I can only presume!) and then a nice night walk along the coastal forest and down to the empty beach. 3/4 moon, empty beach, pounding waves, sweet breeze, warm sand below....a giant volcanic massif behind us....all in the darkness of night. This is what Green Island is all about. Then, on the way home, we came upon the worlds weirdest creature - or close enough thereto.
The goat won the seat in the end!
Japanese white eye (left) and a cool green beetle on the right.
Sunday we decided to get a nice sunburn, and it took us a while to figure out how to do it properly - Green Island style. Some ideas were to slather ourselves with cooking oil and sit on the ferry dock,or lay on the roof and point mirrors on us...and many others that included poached flesh as the key goal. In the end, we decided to rent snorkel gear and head out on our own to the low tide reef and check out fishy critters. That did the job nicely. We now have certified "Green Island Sunburns" on all parts of our bodies that we forgot to slather with sun goo. We look so cool.
However, said snorkel time was amazing - sea cucumbers, some sort of sea anemone, fish up the wazoo (not literally, ill remind you) ...so many cool things. I even found some guys scooter key that he had lost. Totally worth it!
Above and below: lizards, birds and sea slugs
On the road, catching a glimpse of one of the many endangered species roadkill that plagues this island. Too much traffic, little awareness of the ecological fragility of such a small habitat.
Like all things, time flows by and days grow short....we packed up our stuff and headed back to the ferry and took a wavy, windy, undulating ferry ride some, sans vomit. I'm getting good at that compared to my first year in Taiwan. Crystal ever seems to have a problem....
And that is that. Home, back to work, sorting through pictures of things unknown from the oceans shores. Complexity reigns supreme in the worlds oceans, and Green Island is our little window into the world we never knew growing up.
We may never be here again, and if so....goodbye, Green Island!
