TAIWAN: VI

Taroko Park again, this time Trent came and visited us from Korea. It was a faily unstable weekend with the weather - it was super hot for a while and then it got really humid and rained...but we made the best of the sunshine window and took a trip up the river to the village of Taroko proper. Included was a bag of betel nuts and a newfangled beer design.


Above - Ahh..betel nuts. You can also see the road winding its way through the gorge walls in the distance.

Below - Eating dinner at a seafood place; fresh seafood all the time. I think tonight it was lobster. It was lobster a lot when we could afford it.

Above - Sometimes it rained. Standing near the coast after our trip to Taroko.

Above - Trent showing us the betel nut; "we cant leave the last one in the bag....someone has to eat it"

Below - The worlds best action picture. Betel nut spit, given back to the river to nourish the land from where the betel nut came from. The Betelnut industry is quite infamous and has many links to environmental, social and health concerns, but when in rome...

Above - Ok, I lied. This is not Taroko. This is Taitung again, but it is a beautiful sunset picture and I had to throw it in when I came across it.

Below - The newfangled beer design. It is a remnant of some unknown marketing ploy, but it was a neat design regardless.

Above - TienHsiang; looking upstream from the village site. There are a few hostels, a hotel that costs way too much to stay in, and a slew of roadside venues for dinner. Behind me, I realize you cant see it (!!!), is the Tienshiang pagoda and Buddhist temple which is very famous for its history and its service. I will tell a story about it in a later post. Msot relaxing moment of my life.
Above - Sharing a beer and a laugh over dinner.

Below - Forget the name, which is quite ignorant on my part, but it will come to me. Quite a beautiful palce, and statistically the most photographed place in all of Taroko Park.
AHHH - Eternal Springs Shrine. I remembered it. HAH!