I just got back from a 10 day trip to Taiwan. Originally, I'd planned to go to Borneo, Malaysia, but I found a really cheap flight to Taipei and decided to give it a shot.
My first day I just headed from the airport into Taipei to get some sleep before my early train to Hualien, the main gateway to Taroko Gorge. Taroko is considered one of the must-see natural attractions in Taiwan. Originally, I had planned to save it for another trip, but due to Typhoon Morakot which just passed through Taiwan a couple of weeks ago, I had to change my plans.
From Hualien, I had to take a bus up into the National Park, so I finally got there and started hiking about 1 in the afternoon. I had to catch another train south the next day at lunch time, so I had about 24 hours to cram as much hiking in as I could.
As it was a summer Saturday, I was expecting the park to be overrun with tourists, but it actually wasn't too busy at all. I ended up doing several short hikes, most of them only about 30 minutes to 2-3 hours long.
The water looked unbelievably refreshing and inviting, especially considering the sweltering heat and humidity, but there were signs everywhere prohibiting swimming, or even entering the area next to the river. So I didn't want to be the lone foreigner getting fined by the park rangers.
Along one of the trails I saw several of these huge spiders. This picture doesn't do it justice - that sucker's bigger than my hand.
After a long day of hiking and getting nailed with a rain-shower near the end, I made it to a hostel just outside the park gate. They'd lost my reservation, but fortunately they weren't full so I ended up in a dorm for 12 people all by myself.
It had AC so I was pretty happy. However you can see the "mattresses" which are only 3 or 4 cm thick. I ended up using 3 of them, but it still wasn't very soothing after a hard day of hiking.
We drove out to Yeongweol yesterday, which is a small town in the mountains, a couple of hours inland. It was cloudy on the coast, but when we got to Yeongweol it was sunny and really hot.
Driving through the tiny little town, all you see are rafting companies. There must have been at least 20 or 30 different companies, and their parking lots were all full, which meant the river was going to be busy.
I wasn't really sure what to expect. I've gone rafting several times in Canada, and once in Japan, and most of the times the rapids have been pretty good, but I hadn't heard anything about this river.
After getting our helmets, paddles and lifejackets we were crowded into a bus that during the week is used to shuttle kids around to their various after-school classes. We drove for about 20 minutes to the launch site, which was swarming with activity. There were at least 20 rafts putting in every couple of minutes.
We were assigned to a guide, Mingu, who turned out to be a really good guy. On our boat, there was the four of us, and then one other couple, making it a nice small group.
I didn't see any other foreigners on the river the whole trip out of thousands of Koreans, prompting the inevitable, "waegukin ida (it's a foreigner)" from many of the rafters that saw me. Even so, Mingu tried really hard to explain a lot of what he was saying in his very low English. However, a lot of the time I didn't really understand, prompting him to splash me with his paddle in frustration on several occasions.
The rapids were disappointing, as it was mostly just a float down the river, with only one good stretch of rapids. So that's where having a fun guide comes in. He spent a lot of the slow time having us launch each other off the boat, and attacking other rafts. The water temperature was perfect, and a great way to beat the heat.
The scenery was surprisingly beautiful, and relatively untouched. Most of the time you see rivers in Korea, their banks have been concreted, but there was almost no development along this river until the end. Unfortunately, I left my camera in the car, as I didn't want it being damaged.
We only payed 25,000 won each (about $20) for about 3 hours, which I thought was a pretty good deal.
I took this picture on the way up, while we waited in traffic. If it isn't obvious, in the first picture, I'm the guy at the front of the boat on the far right. They had a guy snapping pictures of all the boats as they came in, and then you could buy a copy for $5.
A couple of weeks ago I felt like going for a short hike, so I took a train for about an hour and a half inland to the small town of Taebaek. The provincial park has a few peaks you can climb, so my plan was to climb up one of them and then take the ridge between them to a few more peaks before coming back down.
Unfortunately, the weather didn't cooperate and it started pouring about half way up the mountain. I met a few Koreans coming down, but nobody else was going up. I decided to continue anyways, in the hopes that the clouds might pass. They didn't.
At the top it was pouring and the visibility was only about 50 metres. I thought there might be a small shelter at the top so I could get out of the rain for a bit, but no luck. So I found this rock to hide under while I had a snack.
Because of the poor visibility and the constant rain, I decided to cancel the other peaks. I'll have to come back in the fall.
You can't see the rain in these pictures, but it's coming down hard, and it was cold, so the tank top didn't seem like such a good idea anymore.
Before I left for Japan back in 2005, my buddy Fudge and I spent about 5 months training for the Vancouver Marathon. Even though we trained very hard, the marathon did a number on us. We both managed to finally stumble across the finish line, but we were each in a tremendous amount of pain. We vowed then and there that we'd never, ever, run a marathon again.
Well somehow, back in December last year, I managed to convince Fudge that if I was in Vancouver at the beginning of May this year, we'd run the Half-Marathon together.
As May approached, it looked like I was going to be in South Korea for the marathon, so Fudge was not too consistent in his training.
Well I ended up with more time in Vancouver than expected, which was bad news for Fudge. I spent the last 3 weeks before the Half-Marathon training him like a dog, and he loved every minute of it (although he might disagree.) We went biking, rollerblading and did a ridiculous amount of running. Again, we both stumbled across the finish line in a lot of pain, but it was nothing compared to when we did the Full. However, after we finished this time, he told me he's never running with me again. We'll see.
Okay, admittedly I'm using the word "stalked" a bit loosely, but if I end up disappearing into some cult, sitting around a campfire singing "Kumbaya," never to be seen again, at least this leaves a trail.
I came home from the beach this evening, and found this "Awake" magazine stuffed into my door. It's only in English and there was no Korean version. I am definitely the only non-Korean in the area, and there weren't any in the other doors. There is also a phone number written on the cover, with a Korean's name written beside it (in English). This is the second time I've had English-only Jehovah propaganda in my door. And although I know that this is not really stalking, it does mean that there's a Korean somewhere nearby who has made converting me to the dark side their mission. All I can say is, "Good luck."
I was back in Vancouver for about a month in April/early May. Fortunately the weather was awesome, so I got to do a lot of great outdoor stuff, a lot of which helped me prepare for the Vancouver Half-Marathon Fudge and I were training for.
I'd heard about the hot springs up past the top of Pitt Lake several times, but I'd never made it up there. Derek had been up there before, and suggested we take our bikes up one day when the weather was good.
So one Wednesday when the weather was supposed to be sunny, we grabbed his boat, our bikes and my Dad, and headed for the lake. I've been on Pitt Lake several times, but I'd never been to the top before. It took us about 50 minutes, and the weather was perfect. Because the snow on the peaks was melting, there were several huge waterfalls coming down the mountains and into the lake.
When we got to the top of the lake, we moored the boat and got the bikes ready. Because of the distance to the hot springs, Dad had decided to take it easy and just hang out around the dock. I'd read/heard that it was about 22 km to the hot springs, so we knew we had a lot of work ahead of us. It was a pretty good logging road most of the way, well-maintained and I think we only saw 2 or 3 vehicles the whole trip. It was uphill pretty much all of the way, but it wasn't steep, so we made pretty good time, and saw several deer along the way.
Due to Derek's probable inebriation the last time he made the trip, we made a wrong turn near the end and ended up climbing a steep hill for about 20 minutes. Finally we'd had enough and turned around to try the other way, which actually went downhill and got us to the springs in about 5 minutes (go LEFT when you hit the big fork in the road when you think you're really close.)
Above is the view from the bridge of the canyon the hot springs are in. The hot springs are near the top of the river on the left, but you can't see them.
You hike in for a minute or two from the bridge, and then climb down the rock face using this rope that Derek's showing off on. There are two pools at the springs and one of them is visible at the very top left of the picture. A bit of cement was used to make the pools, but other than that they are pretty much untouched.
The temperature was pretty hot, but it felt really good because we were both in a lot of pain from the ride, since neither of us had been on a bike for a while. Derek checked the temperature of the river, but said it was way too cold - not surprising since it was mostly meltwater.
We returned to the boat to find Dad drinking and eating so he was happy. We loaded the bikes up, and headed back to the main dock. In the morning we had seen an old paddle wheeler on the lake, as they were preparing to film some kind of movie. As we neared the main dock, we saw the paddle wheeler was out on the water, with another boat a ways off set up with cameras filming it. And although I'm sure they would have loved to have had us in it, I don't think we made it into any of the shots.
So I'm back teaching in South Korea after a fantastic month living the good life back in Vancouver.
The humidity's already started to kick in, but I decided I wanted to go out for a hike today before it really gets bad. My new job is only 4 days a week, Monday to Thursday, so I thought today (Friday) would be a good day to go and avoid the crowds.
From what I'd heard, the Mureung Valley is considered one of the nicest in South Korea, but I've been misled before so I didn't have high expectations.
Turns out, they weren't lying. I'd have to say it's probably the nicest place I've been in Korea so far. This second waterfall is one of the biggest draws in the area, as there's a nice little pool you can swim in in the summer. I stuck my feet in to check it out as I really wanted to go for a swim, but after 30 seconds my feet had had enough, so no swim today.
There's very little wildlife left in Korea, as most of it has been hunted to extinction. So all I saw today were a bunch of these little chipmunks darting around all over the place. This one paused just long enough for me to get a picture.
On a completely unrelated note, there's a mountain spring about a 3 minute walk from my apartment where I fill a huge jug for my drinking water. So I was there on Monday and while I was filling it, an old Korean man came up to fill his bottle. He started talking to me and realized quickly how bad my Korean was. So he tried Japanese. Apparently he had been a Japanese professor at the university 10 years ago. He kept talking to me in Japanese for at least 10 minutes, and then finally decided it was time to go.
Well a couple of days ago I was walking home from the grocery store with a bunch of stuff, and I guess he'd seen me, because he pulled up beside me on his bike, and again in Japanese, asked me where I was going. I explained that I was going home so he offered to double me on his bike. He had told me that he was 86 years old, and I'd be surprised if he weighed much more than 100 pounds. Well I weigh around 200, plus I had all my groceries, so something about accepting a ride from him just felt wrong, so I had to decline.
I just got back from a 10 day trip to Taiwan. Originally, I'd planned to go to Borneo, Malaysia, but I found a really cheap flight to Taipei and decided to give it a shot.
The water looked unbelievably refreshing and inviting, especially considering the sweltering heat and humidity, but there were signs everywhere prohibiting swimming, or even entering the area next to the river. So I didn't want to be the lone foreigner getting fined by the park rangers.
Along one of the trails I saw several of these huge spiders. This picture doesn't do it justice - that sucker's bigger than my hand.
After a long day of hiking and getting nailed with a rain-shower near the end, I made it to a hostel just outside the park gate. They'd lost my reservation, but fortunately they weren't full so I ended up in a dorm for 12 people all by myself.
