Day 3: We took a bus to go to the Xincheng train station to rent a scooter for the day. While waiting at the bus stop, we encountered two elderly women who insisted that we get off the bus before the train station to get a better deal on renting scooters. I could understand that one of them asking where we were from because she mentioned Taipei, but also said”Taihoku” just like my host-great-grandfather calls Taipei in Japanese. I switched form broken Chinese to Japanese and asked her if she spoke it, to which she replied “I learned in school”. Her Japanese was slightly difficult to understand, but we were communicating with it much better than we were in Chinese (lol). We talked about what our plans were for the day, where we currently lived, and what we were doing in Taiwan. She gave us directions to the scooter rental shop and told us how much the bus fare would be. As Kevin and I got off the bus, where the two women insisted we get off, she made sure we both thanked the bus driver. It was definitely an interesting way to start my second day at Taroko.
From locations closest to farthest from the entrance… we scooted through Swallow Grotto, Cihmu Bridge, Lushui, Tianxing, hiked the Baiyang Waterfall trail, hiked down to a natural hotspring in Wenshan, and on the way back to the park entrance, stopped by Chengguang Temple and Taroko Tower.
Above: Because smokers’ urges to smoke at a national park are important.
The Scooter Chronicles 