The Beach and Traveling

So we are currently traveling around the Island. We started from Taipei and have traveled south along the East Coast, which has really beautiful view and cliffs. From there we have taken some mountain passes through to the Western edge of the island. It is much more flat on that end but still just as beautiful. You would be surprised at how many fresh fruit trees are growing along the side of the road. Just as amazing are the views along every road of the trip. Maybe I haven't stressed that enough, but it seems like every five minutes we pass by another picturesque scene. I love mountains.

Really it has all seemed like a blur these past 4 days. We have traveled a lot and all of our events have seemed to blur together. Let me see if I can explain them so far.

Swallow Grotto- From the last post- Taiwan is known as an island with a lot of rain (twice as much as Seattle annually) Combined with mountains this makes for some intense rivers. One of these scenes is Swallow Grotto which is a 200 ft canyon carved by the river. It is gorgeous and has been my favorite so far.

Rafting- One day we too ourselves to a rafting adventure site. It was to be a 4 hour trip but due to the lack of seasonal rain the river was low. What was the result? The guides hooked us to their boats and tug-boated us through the rapids really fast. I submit that this is a much better way to do things.

Water Sports and the Beach- We stopped by a beach and took some rides on Jet-skis and inflatable rafts. It was really fun, but a couple of us got really sun-burned (not me though).

Visiting Cities- Most of our trip has taken us to some really neat cities around the island. Each has its own culture. It is really interesting to see the different cultural diversity. In the south there are much more indigenous tribes which make for a different cultural appeal. An example of this would be that most Native Taiwanese are Christian by decent, which is quite different from the mainly Buddhist mainland population, go figure. But still no matter where we go, we still get some very interesting looks, and yes it is still fun!

Oh, by the way. One might think that the events in this post sounds very far from educational to us students. But, again, we have had to use quite a lot of our conversational skills around town. We had some fun conversations with our rafting companions!