As usual, click on a picture to make it enlargenated. Yes, elargenated.
A train (Taiwans finest), a plane (a 20 seater) and an automobile (scooter) got us to, and around, Green Island this weekend. Green Island - Lu Dao - is an island off the south-east coast of Taiwan that is about a 15 minute flight , 40 minute ferry ride, 2.5 day swim away from the main Island of Taiwan. It is dripping with historical and biological wonder, enough to keep anyone busy for the entire weekend. And, yup, we were busied....slowing only to, um, let the wildlife have their way on the road....
Political - It was the site of the White Terror prisons of Taiwanese (Chinese military rule period) history in the mid to late 1900's, where political dissenters, human rights advocates, artists, pro-free speech advocates, outspoken political pundits, anti-government thinkers, university professors, lawyers, poets... were taken to to serve time in hard labour, re-education to side with the communist party and total segregation from all friends, past lives. This was actually the lucky option...the real biography of this prison system reads as follows "political advocates and those opposing the matrial law of the Chinese government who were not executed for their politcal crimes were taken to the prison system on Green Island". The prison now stands as a human rights memorial, with the prison itself a place you can enter, explore, and read about the 40-ish year hell that was Oasis Villa on Green Island.
Biological - Where to begin? An extinct volcanic island, separated from the main Taiwanese island by enough space to force speciation (and the evolution of sub-phyletic endemic species, original even compared to Taiwan island itself); volcanic soil that is highly variable across the island, from red to yellow to grey to black, but all sand and exemplifying the deterioration of volcanic rock; lush tropical forests in the lowlands, arid spacious forests on the mountain peaks; tide zones (and thus extensive tide pools) that host a different array of biodiversity on each side of the island; amazing plants, bugs, flying critters, barking deer, vines, spiders (massive!!), etc.
And, of course, all of this on an island you can scooter around completely in about 30 minutes. Super small, densely packed with biological and geological wonders, diverse and utterly amazing. Its hard to put words to paper and try to describe places. It was not paradise, I would never want to give anyone that impression....of anywhere. But it is damn pretty, warm in the winter and quite slowed down compared to everywhere else on Earth. Yes, Earth. I said it.
Here is our weekend:
The Sun was beating down on us for, lets say, 70% of the time, cloudy and a spittle of rain for the rest. Nothing too wet, but neither was it too hot - just perfect. During the summer this island leaves you sopping wet from just sleeping, let along walking, hiking or eating, so it was a nice change to experience it during the winter for the first time. Extinct volcanoes, lava soil, lush tropical forests, dry ground and a wind that could, literally, take the scooter away from under you (or us...on that hill....turning the corner....yowza). Green Island at its best.
We started in Taitung, Friday night. It is a one hour train ride from Yuli (where our home is...kinda). We took a train, a taxi into town and settled into a nice little hotel for the night.
In the morning we woke early, walked through the market stalls, peered at the veggies and the fish, the clothes and the herbs, and sat and watched the sunrise and blanket the city in heat with a cup of coffee. Then..to the airport for our 8:20 am flight.
At the airport we had little time to kill, so we walked about...and the Taitung Airport is one of the nicest, prettiest there is around here so it was a nice spell of time. Then...into the feverishly windy confines of the sky! A bit of a scary ride, winds so strong, and landing was a bit of an ordeal. But, it was much better than we (I) would have fared on the ferry...known for its vomit inducing nature in the best of times, let alone such fierce winds. So, a choppy flight was a nice alternative in this case.
Landed.
Got our bags.
Left airport.
Rented scooter....the lady was a bit weirded out by us I think, decided to let us rent, and then tried to take us around the island. We had to part ways, forcefully, and pretend that we were needed somewhere....nice lady, but...um....I think she wanted to follow us the whole weekend. Not in our list of chores for the weekend!
Then, straight to the tide pools. Well, breakfast, coffee and a quick lap of the island, then to the tide pools. They, once again, gave us a long stretch of quality biological time. Critters of all sorts - brittle stars, snails, clams, limpets, crabs (dead and alive), vegetable species that I have no clue about...milky clear kelp looking things..., algae, flowering plants on the non-tidal areas of the bigger rocks, birds poking around for lunch (and avoiding our camera quite professionally), and of course the geological wonder of a lava/coral tidal zone. Absolutely stunning, and telling the tale of hundreds of thousands of years of geological and biological development, evolution and giving itself an identity separate from Taiwan itself, and the rest of Asia too. Pretty cool...secluded....
Lunch.
There is so much to see and do, so much to explore, on such a small chunk of rock. But, we focused on the heavyweights. A cross-island hiking trail fitted this quite nicely. It was a heavy uphill trek, but 3/4 of the way we saw....a deer! A pygmy barking deer. Not too common, but common enough...if that makes sense. It is only the 3rd or 4th one we have seen in all of Taiwan, so it toally sparked our interest. We caught a glimpse of it, noticed that it ran into the woods and said region of the woods was a definite 'deer' area - it had deer trails, bedding areas, scratching areas, well trodden zones....it was deer city. So, we waited. Then sneaked into the woods deeper, climbed a tree and waited some more. Then we thought to do a little deer chasing, so we treked into the forest, through the vines and spiders following the min-trails left by the pygmy. Deeper, deeper, we heard its call...deeper, deeper, saw scat, heard its call again...deeper, deeper..then we hit the wall of dense tropical forest, and it was approaching unpenetrable. So, we waited some more, tried a second trail, found no deer...and returned back to the main trail. What a totally awsome little sidetrack! What started as a slight meander into the woods turned out to be the highlight of the weekend...adventure and exploration has its way on us, it seems.
Dinner.
Apparently "Sea Mushrooms" are nothing of the sort. They are, instead, the flesh on the top of the heads of flying fish. They actually do, though, look like mushrooms when they are prepared on a plate with sprigs of basil and hot peppers...lesson learned. Also, this one dinner joint electrifies its fence to keep birds away. Not something to lean on to take a picture...lesson learned. Or, not something to grab afterwards to test your 'electrified' hypothesis. Nor is it worth trying for the next 20 minutes to get your dinner parnter (Crystal) to touch it to see how they feel if they grab it...it wont work. But it's worth a try.
Grabbed a few drinks, headed to the beach to watch the sunset and pine away the evening hours listening to the surf beside a lighthouse, watching the lights of Taiwan in the distance illuminate the evening and chat about life. Fierce winds, chilly evening, but perfect.
Sleep....sleep.....
Wake....wake.....
Coffee, porridge, the usual. We went on another little hike up a hill (an old military outlook) that was home to myriad goats and the place of, perhaps, the best views on Green Island. So, we took pictures. Many. And found a bug that looked like it was made of velvet. Weird. Green velvet. We also returned to the military turrett where snipers would sit and wait for ocean-faring enemies. It is an honestly awsome outlook, so it makes sense that in times of war it is used as such. This is a very tangible part of Taiwan - so much of the infrastructure is due to necessity, and not due to peoples wants. A trail? You better bet that it was built for military purposes or as a link between mountain tribes many years ago. A bike path? You better bet that it was built as a transportation route between two fledgling villages. And so on... . Here Crystal looks out of the sniper pocket, a place that many nervous 20 year old Chinese soldiers once peered out of and hoped that they would make it through the day alive....
After lunch it was to the Prison, mentioned above, and a long appraisal of Taiwanese history, then back to the tide pools. This time we went to the oppposite side of the island and saw totally different critters. Evolution....you beautiful thing you.