Day Four: Hot Springs

At this point in the trip, my camera battery had completely died so any pictures I post are courtesy of Steve and Tammy. Steve has already posted this hideous picture of me on his blog and has had a little too much laughter at my expense because of it. But since I spent the majority of the trip ridiculing the gargantuan helmet he had to wear the whole time, I guess we're even.

Day four started out with Laura and I getting up early and heading over to the scooter rental place to try and rent one more scooter. There wasn't one available right away so I left Laura there with my passport and international driver's license and went back to the hostel to take a shower before all the hot water was gone. Laura came back later with a fifth scooter. The girl was born ready to drive...she is a rockstar on the scooter. I hadn't driven at all the day before and was happy to let her take the wheel. As you can see from my nerdy picture...it doesn't look like I have a lot of confidence in my scooter driving ability. It was another cloudy day in Hualien but we would not be deterred from another fun scooter ride to a new destination. We decided to take Highway 11 and look for some hotsprings that were on our map.

Here are the scooter-riding duos:

Laura and Me!

Tammy and Whitney

Emily and Lish

Mary and Jessica

Joseph and Steve

(and the aforementioned orbit sized helmet that has it's own weather system)

There were road signs along the way telling us the names of the cities we were passing through but other than that, it was pretty hard to find anything. We stopped a few times and attempted to ask for directions but never really got a concrete answer on how to get to any hotsprings. We finally found this little hotspring resort to thaw out in. The water was fabulous!

After soaking to our hearts' content, we decided to head back. Oh yeah...quick story...so Steve is walking to his scooter and asks, "Where's my helmet?" Since his enormous helmet was sitting on his head, I haven't been able to stop quoting that line ever since. I even taught some of my students to say, "Where's my helmet?" to him whenever they see him. The guy will never live that one down. He's our special Steve. You know we love ya Steve!

Jessica is ready for wind and rain in this sporty Muslim woman burqa ensemble designed for comfort and functionality. Word.

We were just about to leave when we discovered Emily and Lish had a flat tire. Tammy and Whitney stayed behind with them to wait for the tire to be changed and the rest of us headed back in the freezing cold wind and wet weather. It was a long drive and nothing at all remotely exciting happened. Nothing at all. Just a peaceful, freezing cold drive back to our hostel in Hualien. Yeah, and when we got back, we decided to order pizza so that it would be there when everyone returned. Our wonderful hostel host, Chi called Pizza Hut for us and helped us order. That night we ate pizza, relaxed, and listened to the amazing poetry of the one and only Joseph Castleton. I think some of Joseph's belongings might end up "missing" in order to be sold on Ebay when he is rich and famous someday. Joseph, consider yourself warned.

Since Laura didn't get to see the coast where we had driven, she and I decided to wake up early the next morning and take a quick drive before our train left. First, we went to the train station at 6am to see if we could score some train seats before they completely sold out. We were able to get five seats and five standing tickets. Then we set out hoping to see the sun rising over the ocean and were able to see a few glimpses of it before it disappeared into the clouds. Laura has the pictures from our ride so I am unable to post them right now, but hopefully they will be available later.

The train ride home wasn't as crowded as it was on the way to Hualien and we were glad to be back after a very fun and unforgettable trip. I had to pack again that night because Emily, Mary, and I had planned a quick trip to Alishan National park. The three of us don't work on Tuesdays for the time being and had that extra day to travel. Will the blogging ever end? I can't keep up. Alishan was gorgeous and you better believe my next blog will have tons of pictures...trees, trees, and more trees.