Caution: Traveling May Cause Drowsiness... and Sore Muscles

We started our first day off in port on a determined search for mopeds. The renter we found who spoke English informed us we would need international licenses, and wouldn’t budge even after Travis offered to pay him off. Probably for the better.

Instead we hopped in a taxi and drove along the coast to Yeliou Geopark, a tiny tourist trap no SASers managed to find. It was raining and freezing, but it was Eric, Travis, and me, and we made the most of it. While other people hid on the ship from the chilly rain , we climbed stairs and stairs and stairs, up to the tippy tops of cliffs overlooking the waves brutally crashing into the jagged rocks below. Over millions of years, the ocean had managed to create a masterpiece with the shoreline. Mushroom-looking rocks sprung out of the tan sandstone boulders. We ran from one to the next, off the beaten path and away from the tourists who stayed close to the entrance, near the park’s main attraction, the “Queen’s Head”, a rock shaped like… well… a queen’s head. The wind pushed us along as we ran past fishermen and into caves, pulling out our flashlights to explore the algae-covered, mossy rocks that gave the caves a smell somewhere between saltwater and damp forest. We spent a couple hours there and then took a bus back to Keelung, where the ship was ported. After a nap and some dinner, we went out to the local night market. Similar to the ones we saw in China, it had some foods we recognized, and more that we didn’t. I stuck to the “iced” cream and took pictures of the rest, including what looked like the arm of the Kraken. I’m not sure where they get the idea to eat some of the things they eat. I haven’t seen a cheeseburger since South Africa.

The next day we hopped the train to another hidden gem that only got a small paragraph in the Lonely Planet guidebook.  Sandiaoling, the writer had said, was good for hiking and littered with huge waterfalls. Both of those were understatements. We climbed more stairs (I should’ve kept track of how many stairs I’ve climbed this trip- Table Mountain, the Him-ah-lias, Mount Huashan, The Great Wall of China, and now Taiwan) and hiked down icy cold rivers. It was still cloudy and cold, but at least it wasn’t raining today. We stood at the top of rushing waterfalls that fell over 100 feet and climbed cliff faces with the help of chains and ropes. After 6 or so miles of pure obstacle course, we stumbled upon the train station our train would have come to next if we had stayed on that morning. After six hours of hiking and wandering, we made our way back to Keelung again, tired and sore and covered in mud. I took my shoes in the shower with me that night, and the day was worth every drop of mud I managed to get on the shower walls.

We took the bus that night to Taipei, about a half hour away, and spent the night eating some of the best food we had tried on the trip. BBQ with eggs and noodles in secret sauce, sausage in secret sauce, grilled corn in secret sauce. Needless to say, we knew what made the food good. We met a man named James, who took us around and showed the boys places to try weird things, including a shot of snake’s blood, which they took in front of a crowd of onlookers.

We spent our last day in Taiwan in Taipei, riding the world’s fastest elevator up to the top of the world’s third tallest building, Taipei 101. We spent the rest of the day searching for a market, but to no avail, and took the bus back to Keelung to wander the streets and spend our last coins buying ice cream cones at the nearest fast food joint, a tradition in every port.

Yesterday we left our last foreign country. It’s weird to know that our trip is almost over, and weird to think that in 11 days I’ll be turning my phone back on and asking for directions without speaking slowly or repeating myself. I think I’ll miss it more than I know.