Bom Gia Brazil! Tucans, anteaters, FRUIT, adventures and a whole lot of Waterfalls

It’s all very well thinking when you fly across the world for half a week to find some friends that they would give you a day to relax and reset your life but maybe not when you fly to visit Juanita. Juanita and Paul had been in Brazil for 5 months before I arrived and had been volunteering with some guys involved

in permaculture. I arrived at their house in Campo Grande and was greeted by the HUGEST avocados I have ever seen, this white grainy pancake thing, honey, yummy coffee and a volley of Brazilian men. The rain was pouring down all around us and the trees were so tropical looking, even in the little verandah where they lived. I was still confused and tired when Juanita told me to pack a bag for a few days because we were off to visit the home of their friend and pseudo boss, Wagner, a few hours away. So after spending 56 hours in transit, I got into a car with next to zero legroom, myself, Paulie, Wagner and Juanita sharing the backseat and Wagner’s cousin Flavio and Flavio’s father, Antonio in the front.

 

Three hours later we had traveled along green green fields and amazing trees and little towns, I had played ukulele and learned as much Portuguese that I think is possible in a day, we had sang songs and talked about everything and tried to sleep yet it was way too uncomfortable and after all that, we were only half way. One must remember that a few hours, or 3 hours in Brazilian speak can mean anywhere between 6 hours and perhaps three days depending on the context. Yet finally, after a long jolty dirt road we arrived at the house of Flavio’s father. And I got re-introduced to my now most feared enemy- the mosquito. 

Now it is something not really discussed when people go wild about going to the Amazon or any other amazing tropical place and I don’t know why more emphasis isn’t placed upon it. But the fact is, that you can be in the most incredible spectacular mind-blowing places in your life but if there are mosquitoes trying to bite you in droves, it is simply not fun. I spent my days at Flavio’s father’s house covered in clothes and when I forgot and wore short shorts, covered in mosquitoes. They bit me everywhere and at night the mosquito song woke me and up and kept me up in terror. They also didn’t leave cute little South African size bites but big welts all along my legs and back and I itched and scratched until they bled, trying not to be miserable about it. There was only 3 modes from then on that I liked being in- in Flavio’s car with the windows open blowing them away, hiding under water or with a fan upon my body. 

Regardless, Flavio’s father’s property was on the edge of the Pontanel which is one of the most bio-diverse areas in all of Brazil. It is a series of wetlands which brings incredible birds and incredible wildlife and a wonderful lack of people. There is one house in about 50 000 hectares so and to get in or out of the Pontanel you have  to go on  dirt roads through people’s farms. If you want to escape all manor of people, it’s the place to go. I didn’t go there but Juanita and Paulie had to fly there in November there because during the wet season one cannot get there at all.  It starts in the West of Brazil and extends into Paraguay. From Falvio's father's house we could walk up to the edge of the Pontanel on the mountain and look upon it, huge wetalnds stretching as far as the eye can see.

But Oh Brazil! The sky was so big, I kept on looking at it and wondering how a sky can be so big! The sunsets, the sunrises all blew me away (only when I was wearing full body clothing.) Flavio and Wagner themselves blew me away in their knowledge of fruits and vegetables and I constantly wondered what I had done with my life, I didn’t even know how to machete or Fakong a coconut!  Wagner himself was a 33 year old boy. His face portrayed so much youthfulness and his sweet loving nature was open like a child. As was his skill at climbing trees. Before I met him, I thought I had some sort of prowess at tree climbing yet Wagner leaps, jumps and crawls up trees without a smidgeon of fea I saw him put a raw egg and egg shell into a cup and start eating it. I said “Wagner, is that an egg?” he smiled “si si” and I said “with eggshell?” and I started to explain that egg shell was the box of the egg and he said “Si SI!” I got a second opinion and after it had all been explained, his smiling “Si SI’s” turned into a horrified “No Mary, No!”. 

r. He used to live in the Amazon and was doing some sort of protest art against people who were destroying it and he learned to climb trees like a monkey (what else does one do in the Amazon?) Anyway Wagner is obsessed with seeds and growing things and so often he would find a random tree and be up it in a second taking all the fruit, or we would be under a tree collecting all the seeds (another tedious, mosquito and huge ant filled task). He didn’t speak English, or at least he knew a few words, and sometimes when you asked him questions he would simply pretend he understood and smile and nod saying “Si Si”. Once I thought

Flavio on the other hand could speak English quite well and proved to be a wonderful  Portuguese teacher. He had traveled some and was the only Brazilian I met in my time there that had any concept of time. Now means now (or at least in the next 30 minutes) to Flavio and I wonder how he has survived in the country so far. Punctual yet with patience he wanted to show us every adventure he could in the time we were there. His father, Antonio was a seventh Day Adventist Missionary and he was very excited that we had 4 continents together in this strange place at the edge of the earth which he mentioned in all his prayers. And indeed it was true, myself from Africa, Juanita from Oceania, Paulie from Europe and them from South America. He decided Juanita and I were crazy and most of the time when he wasn’t playing his religious music or having religious discussions, or showing us his Seventh Day Adventist books from our specific continent with whoever he could, he would laugh and point at us and say “Meninas locas!” (crazy girls). 

We left Antonio and his house and Antonio some sunsets and sunrises, family visits, good food and a ridiculous amount of ukulele playing and ukulele teaching (Paul, Juanita and Wagner all were my very determined students) and went on to find a waterfall

 On the way we happened upon his uncle's car stuck in a river because I THINK they had wanted to take a picture of, i don't know, something, so they decided to go through the river and not the lovely dry bridge right beside it. They didn't seem too concerned yet were happy for our pushing and grunting them out of the river.

Onwards we went yet apparently it wasn't just any waterfall as we went along dirt roads and dirt roads and farms and amazing colours and dirt roads until we went up this dirt road to find a flooded road. Well, nothing stops Flavio and we all got out and waded for about 100 metres through mosquito infested dirty road water up to our waists when finally we realized the water wasn’t going to stop and soon we might be up to our necks and no closer to the waterfall. About turn and back the way we came to the hometown of Flavio and Wagner (Antonio stayed at his house) and we arrived for tea at some aunts and uncles and then tried to swing a supper at Wagner’s cousins house as Wagner is the king of a free lunch (No concept of time apparently but when it's time to eat, it's definitely time to show up). A free supper and a free bed with a fan (YAY) we woke up the next day and tried again for this waterfall.  We went through different farms and visited the cousins farms and then found ourselves at the side of a rushing river. After a run a kilometer through more mosquitoes we were greeted by the rushingest of rivers. It looked like a crossing could only end in bodies being speared upon logs floating around the river yet i was not deterred and i jumped in the water and held fiercely  onto a tree to escape the mosquitoes. there was no way I was not going to cross the river thinking maybe there would be less mosquitoes on the other side. 

Everyone was unsure yet if anyone could swim across and not die, but Wagner seemed the most likely to survive, so we told him to go first. He swam across rapidly and ended up a bunch downstream but safely on the other side Flavio and I launched forth next, and made it some way further down the river. Juanita and Paulie looked unsure on the other side and I tried to sign that it was easy with hand signals over rushing water sounds but I think the mosquitoes biting them was enough to want to cross the river. The other side we scrambled up some rocks and beheld the most brilliant of waterfalls I have ever been privy to. It was gigantic and with the rainy season it had so much power falling upon water upon water. We swam gloriously and used the heaviness of the waterfall upon our back to stop the itching of the mosquitoes.

After finally getting to our waterfall and somehow safely back down the mosquito path and into the car we were covered in welts but not too upset. We continued our mission to Bonito which is of course Bonito (beautiful). A place of clear water and colourful fish, I was sadly there at the wrong time because the rain had made the water muddy and I couldn't see any fish. We did find a place to sneak into that was free and body surfed the rapids and barely missed falling down another waterfall by sneakily going into a side current.

We stayed there at friend Marcello’s house who was a mad fish photographer and showed me millions of pictures of crazy looking fish while we lay in his hammock and listened to delightful Brazilian music. 

It was time to return to Campo Grande after missioning far and wide in places I didn’t even know I was in. Finally half asleep Wagner yelled and there it was, a GIANT anteater ambling across the field! Wha

GIANT 

ANTEATER!!!

t a mad animal, so strange and peculiar, so big with a ridiculous tail and a ridiculous snout. YAY Brazil. The sunset was beautifully set upon us as we headed home, giant macaws and Tucans were flying home and we stopped at a market to eat deep-fried cheese in deep-fried pastry and Flavio bought us a blow up dinosaur to bring further on our travels which we named appropriately, Flavio. Back in Campo Grande with a bed and a fan, a kitchen and space for my legs to stretch... it was time to sleep.

Embarking towards Brazil- Tears and relief in the world of transit

Cape Town was doing what Cape Town does best the day before I was to leave for Brazil-  raining in all its full glory. I washed my clothes and when I woke up on Tuesday morning I was greeted with all my clothes clean yet sopping. This is something normally I could reason out quite effectively but a travel-across-the-world day where I don’t know what is going to happen on the other end is not a day when I am at my full capabilities. So soon I was running across the city with tears streaming down my face somehow feeling like the entire world is falling down my head because of a pile of wet clothes. At the Laundromat there was a clear sign “Driers can only be used if you wash” yes obviously I decided to be illiterate and put my clothes in anyway. The laundry lady was completely on it though, caught me and tried to shove me out. Apparently I couldn’t pay her any amount of money to let me dry, I couldn’t even start a fake wash cycle. Luckily my tears were only barely below the surface of my face and I graciously let them loose. The cleaning lady looked at me with some sort of contemptuous pity and said “Fine, dry your clothes”. 

I continued my day with more emotional packing and my parents picked me up early and we made our way to the airport. At the check-in desk the man asked “Where’s your return itinerary?’ and I said “what?” and he said, “Brazil won’t let you in if you don’t have it.” I pleaded but there was no budging, I wasn’t to be let on without some sort of proof I was leaving the Brazil at some point. In a stressful movement my parents and I rushed to Ocean Basket for some computer searching for some sort of bus or plane that would remove me from Brazil for the sake of passport control. Well I found a bus that would take me to Paraguay at a nice price but apparently one couldn’t book it online. All the flights were upward of 500 dollars and it all seemed hopeless till my father suggested a travel agent and an unpaid itinerary. A frantic call to a travel agent booked me a flight but when we looked at the emailed itinerary it went from Buenos Aires and not from any city in Brazil. Another stressed phone call later she had sent us a nice unpaid itinerary from Rio to Paraguay. I stressfully showed this itinerary to the check-in man, praying he would not see that top right hand corner with "THIS ITINERARY IS UNPAID AND NO RESERVATION HAS BEEN MADE". My heart stopped a beat yet finally he grunted and gave me my boarding passes.

  

Doha city lights

The plane was 2 hours late, of course, after all that stressing and a thunder storm in Johannesburg didn’t help matters yet 12 hours later we are about to land in Qatar. The loud speaker was on and reported the time, “it is now 8.30am local time in Doha”. I looked at my boarding pass going to Sao Paulo from Doha and the boarding time was 7.40am. Well, there was nothing I could do, so I refused to think about it. Out of the plane and into the airport almost all of us on the South African flight were told we had missed our connecting flights- flights to Belgium, Bangkok, Istanbul and Sao Paulo. Oh dear. A day late was not a problem but I had bought a domestic flight in Brazil for that evening which was impossible to get onto. AH! So in the boiling desert heat we shuttled off to a 5 star hotel near the airport. Fancy people greeted us and I went into the dining room where they served any kind of breakfast one could ever want then ascended to my hotel room which was more than double the size of my apartment in Korea complete with couches to invite friends over and 2 beds (I slept in both just coz I could). 

 

Well then, business. I needed to change my domestic flight. I tried to find a number for the company online, everything was all in Portuguese but I got somewhere somehow. S

kype didn’t like phoning 1- 800 numbers so, my head throbbing with all the madness, I went to the main desk and asked them to use their phone. The number didn’t work and I was near bursting into tears until everyone at the front desk gave me a caring c
hat about how I had to go eat and I would feel better. I did feel better, like a new person better, and finally the lady found a number that worked. Then I called, waited on line for about 20 minutes for an English speaker, changed my flight with a fine of 170 dollars (the flight only cost 100) and had to pay another 40 euros for the international calling charges.

With most of the stress out of the way (besides the fear of not being allowed into Brazil) it was time to see the world. A Belgium girl I had mt at the airport and I decided to adventure around. There’s probably a reason why not many people dream of visiting the Middle East. I cannot speak for everything of course but Doha was a dusty, dry and fake city. We walked along streets of nothing yet hard desert and then suddenly there was a patch of green grass that you knew took tons of water to keep healthy. Fake palm trees lined their water area and amazing architecture surrounded us. It was if, because they did not have their own natural beauty, architecture would have to do. It was so hot at 5 o clock we found refuge in a gigantic mall full of Islamic fashion. We found the water on our way back and shared our life stories. Stuck in Doha, she going to Belgium, me to Brazil we found solace in the fake palm trees and the calm water, some men gave us some nuts and some English speakers helped us find a taxi home. 

A sleep and a 5 am wake up found me on shuttle back to the airport. The plane was late, of course (why it couldn’t have been late the day before I don’t know) but then onto Brazil it was. The flight was long. Oh so long. Longer than long. A Filipino lady fainted and they were calling all the doctors on board as she needed medical attention. An Argentinian and a Brazilian were talking about the lady and the Argentinian said he knew another Filipino who fainted once and he concluded that all Filipinos like fainting. Oh dear. People. Anyway we finally arrived in Sao Paulo and after many babies crying and a buzz of discomfort all around. I got into the customs queue with my heart beating fast still frightened I was not to be let into Brazil with my unpaid for itinerary. I went to the counter trying to look as nice and nonthreatening as possible. Yet, after 44 hours of worrying the lady barely looked at me, grumpily stamped my passport and I was in BRAZIL!

Then onto my next flight where I had to rush to but yet again the boarding time came and passed and I waited for the plane. Not understanding anything I just hoped I didn’t somehow miss the flight. Finally everyone was called to the desk and a huge group of people began shouting in Portuguese. I found an English speaking man and he told me the flight was cancelled. Yet there was hope! My flight to Campo Grande had a layover in Rio and perhaps I would get a direct flight instead now. So after some more waiting around they had a translator phone me and told me that no, the plane would be going tomorrow. I pictured sleeping in the airport and hungry because I didn't have any money and after the long mission I had made I began to cry. The airport people didn’t know what to do with me so instead they took me to the restaurant and bought me some deep fried roll thing filled with cheese and a coke. The translator called again and explained that in fact I was not to sleep at the airport and was to go to a hotel. This cheered me up some and the 4 other people how were also going to Campo Grande went together. There was an old guy who was traveling with literally nothing. Just in his jeans and his shirt, no bag, no nothing. There was a beautiful Brazilian girl who showed me pictures of her modeling wedding dresses and pictures of her child yet I finally found out that somehow she wasn’t a model she was an oral hygienist and she just likes taking photos. Her dentist boss was traveling with her and learning English and I encouraged him to practice a little with me. After some shyness we started talking slowly and then the last person was a music lecturer. She travels to all the small towns all over Brazil and learns their traditional songs and music and teaches what she learns to students. She was a very powerful woman with a husky voice and somehow could speak English so well and I wished we were in a place where I could hear her sing.

On to the hotel and a sleep and a wake up and a shuttle and a wander around the airport and finally I was on a plane and asleep and in Campo Grande. I was finally there and I walked through the gates to see… No Juanita. Oh dear after all my flight changes something had gone wrong and I thought I  was an hour late and had been abandoned. I walked around the tiny airport

depressedly and when I came back to arrivals FINALLY there she was dressed in mad paint and her boyfriend Paulie had dressed as a redneck cow boy with handle bar mustache and all. I wish I had had more time to appreciate the awesomeness of their appearances but I was so tired I could only smile and stop myself from crying yet again. I was here finally and it was time to be with friends... and swear off aeroplanes for the rest of my life.

Colours, shapes and sounds of Taiwan

It’s only a week since I have returned home from my trip to Taiwan and already it is just a blur of colours, shapes and sounds. Fast trains, slow scooter rides, ambling walks, people everywhere, people nowhere. I began my journey with a 23 hour layover in Shanghai. I originally bought the flight as I wanted to explore Shanghai before Taiwan but some visa complications later I realized it was a sad impossibility. So, armed with my laptop, ipod, a book, my camera I felt enough projects to keep me occupied for at least a few hours. Dismally I walked into customs where I was transported to another desk and a lot of stamping and mandarin conversation later I figured I should say something. I began with, “Is there any way I can go into China?” She looked at me and responded “Just take the train.” Flabbergasted and a little tearful, I walked away with a passport complete with a one day entry permit into China!

Well then I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t know anything about Shanghai. But at the luggage check I saw a blonde boy checking his luggage as the same time. An idea was forming so I tried my best welcoming-conversation pose and the German obliged and asked me where I was from. So I told him my Shanghai plight and he told me he was being shown around by his Shanghai-ian friend who he had been studying with in a university in Australia for 6 hours. And then he said “would you like to join us?” and I responded (with perhaps a way too enthusiastic “I’D LOVE TO!” and we were on our way.

As they were engineers they needed to take the high speed rail into Shanghai and we were soon traveling at 300km/h and were in Shanghai 8 minutes later. Then onwards we went on a tourist bus and to see the Shanghai telephone tower and the river and a ferry ride across it and then to an AMAZING Chinese meal of all sorts of yummy strange things (complete with cooked pigeon with his beady eyes still staring at us). The lovely Shanghai-ian and his beautiful girlfriend found me a hostel for the night and promised to meet me for breakfast the next day. They picked me up the following day for yummy Chinese dumpling breakfast and hot soya milka and we watched the old people doing their morning tai chi or variations of it in the park.  And then a walk and talk later I was off to the airport to begin my adventures in Taiwan. I figured Shanghai was an excellent prelude to unexpected adventure I was so ready for more! 

Taipei was pretty much as busy as Shanghai but I found my dear boyfriend Roman on the other side after some plane delays and such. We couchsurfed at this guy Jon’s house, shared some stories about korea versus Taiwan and went to a night market to get some yummy food and an awesome yellow zebra hoody! The next day we were off on our climbing adventure. North of Taipei there are the most amazing boulders or cliffs right along the ocean called LongDong and to a climber, it is heaven. 500 routes stretch along this coastline and as you climbThere are more than 500 routes of different levels and just beauty unsurpassed. However, the bus dropped us off at the wrong stop so we had to walk back and a kind driver stopped and gave us a lift to where he thought the beginning of the climbing was. Well he was kind of right, yet is was on the other-other side so we went on a rather precarious hike with all our things down this muddy path onto the rocks and along the rocks. At times the path kind of petered out and the only way to get across was to climb across with quite a large drop down. It was heaven for me, I was born to leap across rocks and after a real climb (with ropes and harnesses and such) and some hours we made it to where we were meant to start. No matter, we found some water and went back to find a camping space. The only place to camp was a very uneven sort of flat rock and after a sunset climb and some food and watching a Weeds (a TV show) together on my Ipod we found some sleep to the harmony of the crashing waves.

We woke up the next day to Christmas day itself and after some climbing we decided to search for Christmas lunch. We found a little dark roadside room and ate some noodles, vegetables and a pink milk drink for the total of $3 or R20, Christmas Score! Then we decided to enjoy the sunshine and fell asleep in the sun until the sun decided to retreat behind a cloud and we decided to cross a million rocks once again to go climbing and met some very nice Taiwanese climbers who shared their ropes with us.

Not wanting to sleep on the uneven rock again we decided to hitchhike to the closest bus stop and go from there. We got a lift from a man working on a Taiwan’s second nuclear plant and coming back from work as Christmas is simply another day in Taiwan. He took us further along the way to his town and a short and cheap train ride away from Taipei. Our Couchsurfer said we could stay another night so to waste time before we could get into his house, we traveled to the other side of the city to some hot springs. At these hot springs we were included into a conversation with 3 Taiwanese adults who taught us a little bit about the Chinese language and characters. Apparently Mandarin does not have a past or future tense, yet they just say “tomorrow” or “yesterday” (which really, REALLY makes sense) and about how all the Chinese characters look like what they are trying to say. We learnt the symbol for “small” and “heart” which together means “be careful” but then I didn’t know how they really say “he has a small heart” without saying “he has a BE CAREFUL!” 

The next day we went forth to Hualien which is a small city which is the gateway to Taroko Gorge. Taroko Gorge is the place in Taiwan which holds most of Taiwan’s animal and plant life. It is characterized by a small precarious road the goes along the gorge and is surrounded by huge cliffs and mountains above. The water is a kind of unreal smoky blue and along the way are little hikes one can do around it. We rented a scooter for a few days, set up our tent in the campsite and were ready for some exploring. 

We also heard that here was a hot spring one can go to in the gorge but we were advised we shouldn’t go there because apparently 7 years ago a rock fell on a park ranger and killed him. This didn’t seem like enough reason to deter us and we rode along the sketchy road in the dark, found the entrance and descended down to the gorge. Because people are encouraged not to go there, there is no easy way to get into the pools, one has to climb through the fence and down precarious ropes, but once you are down there you are in these amazing hot pools right next to a rushing cold gorge. Absolute magic.  

The rock fall situation in Taroko Gorge was actually quite serious and in the morning we would see so many rocks on the road that had fallen in the night. The road itself had all sorts of tourist buses going up and down it daily and at times the road shrunk to one lane and with the traffic, rock falls and its twisty nature, it was interesting, if not rather harrowing driving. The reason the road was even built was to make a link between the east and the west of the island. As Taiwan is a long oval that is incredibly mountainous in the middle, one had to go all the way around the coast of the Island to get from the east to the west. However in the work, 450 men died building the road due to the many rock falls. 

We slept there for 2 nights and on our last morning we had permits to go on a longer hike up into the mountains. On is only allowed to do it with a permit and people are only allowed in before 10am every day. We were the first ones in and went up and up and up to the most heavenly views and a rather precarious walkway along the edge of mountain. Roman had been talking about wanting to see a monkey as he had only seen monkeys in the wild in Cambodia yet our couchsurfer host had told us in the 7years he has lived in Taiwan he had never one. But while walking along this hike we saw our first Macau MONKEYS! All just sitting around a staring at us giving us a wonderful show. YAY for monkeys and pretty insects and lots of spider webs. 

We then left the haven of Taroko and went back to Hualien to take a train down south where we heard the weather was warmer. All I wanted was one day of bikini and beaching which could see me through my last 2 months of COLD COLD winter in Korea. We explored Hualien a bit, had some yummy almond tea at a tea shop and kept on seeing people burning yellow paper in huge metal fire buckets. When we asked a lady why, we kind of understood from her it was something to do with Buddhism. She was burning incense as well. After some internetting I think what it was the burning of Joss Paper which is meant to be spiritual money that one’s ancestors can use in the afterlife and apparently people don’t only burn this yellow or “gold” paper but also credit cards or cheques to help their deceased relatives. 

 

Our train took us South to Fangliao where we needed to take another bus to Kenting. We walked out of the station and immediately a girl told us we needed to share a taxi with them. We decided not to argue and got in the car and after listening to some loud Mandarin conversations one of the English speaking girls told us “they are talking about how much they like fruit” and the taxi driver abruptly did a U- turn and our friend said “he is taking us to buy fruit”. So we returned to Fangliao to buy some delicious cherries, pineapple and bananas. Back in the car we again endeavored to go to Kenting. Our friends asked us where we were staying and when we admitted to having no idea they made some phone calls and found us a hotel for only $30.  

Well the hotel was really nice and fancy and we had such a comfortable sleep after sleeping on the hard ground every night and a tiny couch at the couchsurfer’s house. We tried to stay again the next night but the price had gone up to $120 dollars a night because appaently the whole of Taiwan had officially gone on holiday. 

OH DEAR! We had been living from cheap to cheap and avoiding tourists but now they came in droves. Family upon family, all accommodation and backpackers were booked up yet finally we found a dodgy looking place which gave us less spectacular accommodation for the same price as the fancy hotel the first night but a bed is a bed. We then went exploring the Kenting National Park, around the “Alley of the Butterflies” and again we saw some Macau monkeys just waiting for us! But then the rain came DOWN and we got ponchos and continued scootering to a restaurant where we ate our way through the rest of the afternoon and then around to the night market in Kenting. A huge street night market with wonderful food and cheap clothes and good vibes However, there is this Taiwan specialty called Stinky Tofu which one presumes is some mistranslation yet it REALLY isn’t. At a market it smells out about 30 metres on either side of it and it’s so vile that one immediately feels like vomiting at its putrid invasion into one’s nostrils. Apparently the taste is really good once you get past the smell but I just cannot understand why something so disgusting smelling could exist and as taste and smell are very closely connected ,this cannot make logical sense. Thus we didn’t  try any and according to experts this makes me a failed Taiwan traveler. 

Failed travelers as we were, we decided Kenting wasn’t lovely and warm enough and way too touristy, so it was officially time to find more places. But the next day dawned dark and stormy so we abandoned our leaving plans and decided to brave the weather on the scooter. Well it was the windy season and true to its name, it blew and blew us across the road in any direction it pleased yet we still decided to drive around the peninsula. Although being thrown off the road and into the roaring ocean was definitely possible we drove on and after crashing stormy rain in my eyes we arrived at a sign which said Special Scenic Area. Intrigued we stopped and found the great “Nature Fire.”

This area had natural gas coming out of cracks in the ground and when it ignites it never stops burning. Many people were gathered around this “Nature Fire” making popcorn and we braaied some marshmallows (tourism rocks sometimes, they always have just what you need). What I loved most about it was that it is fire that does not smoke on your clothes as it is not burning anything to cause smoke and secondly, when the pouring rain came and everyone ran away the fire didn’t stop burning and while the rain was wetting us, the fire was keeping us dry. 

We finally did leave Kenting and hitchhiked our way back to the Fangliao train station with some lovely couples (one of which took us to the station doorstep and gave us a present of Taiwanese snacks) and we bought a ticket to Tai-dong where we were going for the day before we took an overnight train to Taipei. It was New Year’s Eve and we figured the train was the easiest place to find accommodation. Well Taidong took us by surprise as we discovered that an Aboriginal festival was happening that very night. Although Taiwan is only 2% Taiwanese Aboriginals the culture still runs alive and proud and that night we went along a long dark road where a girl had pointed us down earlier and after walking pretty aimlessly I decided it was time to celebrate New Year’s Eve. I pulled out a bottle of wine and was just about to open it when a car pulled up. They didn’t speak English but they were trying to help us and telling us to get into their car which we didn’t think was the best of ideas as we didn’t know where they wanted to take us. Finally they told us to go into the big house we were standing next to. We asked if anyone knew English and could point us toward the Aboriginal festival and he replied “Here is the festival!”

Well they did look a little unTaiwanese and I didn’t know what aboriginals looked like so we sat down at the couch and the huge family started feeding us, ignoring our pleas that we had already eaten. I set the wine on the table and they opened it and poured it for us and asked a million questions and took a million photos. Soon they gave us both a small green ball thing, apparently “Taiwanese Coconut” that we had to chew but we mustn’t swallow. Not sure if this was in any way salubrious we realized we had no choice and chewed away at this leaf-ball-thing. My mouth went numb and Roman said his head became dizzy and I was wondering if they were drugging us when all of a sudden I was spitting out this red liquid into a bucket. Finally they announced we could spit it out and I was happy to have my mouth back. Now know that it was an Areca Nut wrapped in Betal Leaf which is a mild stimulant related to coffee. Yet it is extremely carcinogenic and when I saw some of the family’s teeth I didn’t really think it would be something I’d get into. 

Anyway soon they dressed Roman up in some traditional aboriginal wear and we wear dancing around the living room and then they herded us out to see the real festival. 100 metres down the road there were many many people all dressed in colourful clothes with bells on their ankles and going from door to door into people’s living rooms to sing songs . Apparently this is some sort of proposal where back in the day when a man wanted to marry he would take his men and they would sing to the family to ask for the girl’s hand in marriage. Now it is simply a ritual, bringing singing and dancing into many people’s homes. And as I said to Roman, it really takes the idea of caroling to a new level. We danced along the streets with them and that it was time to get on the train. 

 

Midnight passed quietly with both Roman and I fast asleep after aboriginal madness and 2013 raised its sleepy eyes on us at 3am when we had to give up our seats for other people as we were now in the standing section for the rest of the journey. We found a place to huddle on the floor and found Taipei at 5am. Then onto collecting our climbing gear and soon back to the airport and a long sleepy flight back to Korea land. 

It was one hell, or heaven of a week. Traveling laughing, being silly meeting such kind hearted people.  Hiking, climbing, scootering, hot springing, camping and Aboriginal dancing. It was one of those trips where I felt open to everything.  I always find that when you are open to everything the most magical and surprising things happen to you. Holiday gives you time to welcome the unexpected and to ride that wave of new cultures and experience. As usual I hope to always bring that “why not?” attitude of the holiday-er to my everyday life, so that new moments of kindness and love can be shared from myself to you, from you to others, from others to me. Open to give. And open to receive.