Weekend at Hualien

This past weekend was really fun. We went to a place called Hualien. It's a smaller city, but it was really nice. It's more of a tourist destination , so more people there spoke English, which is always really nice. I didn't quite know what to expect, this whole trip people have been asking, "Have you been to Hualien?" So now I can say, that yes, I have.

When there I stayed in my first hostel. They gave us one room with 5 bunk beds that all nine of us piled into. It wasn't bad. We had a community bathroom for the whole floor. It was actually kind of fun to have all of us in the same room.

Our first day we spent hiking in Taroko Gorge. We hired a taxi to drive us around for the day. It ended up costing about $70 US dollars for the day for all of us. Totally worth it. They drove us first to what they call the Bridge of 100 lions because there are 100 marble lions carved into it.

Almost all of the gorge is made of marble, so there is a lot of marble all throughout Hualien. For example, many of the sidewalks are paved with chunks of marble. Next to the bridge is the start of a hiking trail. There also was a sign that made me kind of nervous.

I guess we were in a rainforest, after all! I was on the look out for bees the whole time! We hiked for quite a while. The area is in an Aboriginal reserve--something similar to our Indian reservations. We past a couple of spots that looked like they were farming, but out of respect we weren't allowed to leave the trail.

After hiking the drivers drove us around to major spots along the gorge that we explored. They were things like look out points, shrines, and we even stopped at one Buddhist temple.

One evening we went to the market and walked around and got souvenirs which was fun. Hualien also is famous for having a stone market which we went to one night. I splurged and bought myself a jade bracelet. All the nurses here wear jade. It is supposed to bring luck and protect them from disease. I just think it's beautiful. The stone market was really cool. Besides having tons of jade, they also have a ton of other stones which were fun to look at. In between all the shops there was a stage where later in the evening we were able to see a performance. Some aborigines came and performed traditional dances. It was really interesting to watch. On some of the songs they came to the audience and invited some of us to dance with them. I'm such a bad dancer though... I don't think I figured out what the steps were until the song was over.

This picture isn't that great, but you can sort of see me in the back wearing blue

It was a wonderful weekend. I could never get over how beautiful everything was around me--the trees, the water, the mountains, the warm rain. It was great.