There And Back Again: Taiwan, Day 10: A Short Hike, Hengchuen Lunch Pt. 2, Snorkling, Chuhuo Fires, and Night Market

Ok, so I need to speed this up or I'll be updating even once I get back to Nashville... First let me tell you that Tammy's camera died when we hit the natural ground fires and I'll be updating pictures past that point in the next day or so once Anderson comes up here and I can get his pictures.

We started off the day will a little hike up Mt. Gui (which means "Turtle Mountain"). Anyone ever seen Alien: Resurrection (the 4th Alien movie)? Well, there's this part in the movie where Ripley cuts her hand and throws her blood on the window... anyway, it was so humid and hot during this hike that I could literally flick my wrist and sweat would fly off. Tammy was miserable. You know it's hot when sweat is running down your legs. The view from the top was great though and we saw old Japanese bunkers from when they occupied Taiwan.

From there we went back to Hengchuen and had lunch. The scooter ride felt heavenly. We went to another local restaurant and the food was great. We waited till it hit 1:00PM and... BOOM! Happy Anniversary! One year ago Tammy and I were married, Devon gave Tammy the Green Lantern ring, and all three of us looked awesome in our garments. Back to Taiwan, the braised pork dish we had was pretty awesome.

After lunch we scooted down to a little bay that was littered with coral and a few reef fish. The spot itself was pretty awesome. The water is some places went down to probably 20 feet and once you went down about 5 feet the water was *freezing*. We spend an hour or two there snorkeling and headed up the east coast. It was at this point that the camera died (well we managed one more picture at Chuhuo) and I'll have to get the pictures from Anderson. The coast was very beautiful. We headed back towards Hengchuen for their night market, but we stopped briefly at Chuhuo first to see the natural gas fires (pretty underwhelming). The night market was pretty good, crowded, and full of food to try. Pictures will come later.

Chuhuo natural gas fires. No trespassing beyond the fence... <_<

This was a pretty cool shot. You'll probably have to click on it to enlarge it, but it is wind power. There are these scattered around Taiwan and I think they're pretty cool. Now the reason we took this picture is because to the right you can see the Nuclear power plant. Wind and Nuclear in one spot!

This aqueduct is where the water that is used to cool the nuclear power plant runs back out to the ocean. They use sea water to cool the reactor. The funny thing is that where we were snorkeling was really hot in some parts because it was the reactor water... haha. Don't worry, it wasn't irradiated.

The braised pork. De-lish-us.

The top dish is Taiwanese fajitas! Ok not really, but it seemed like it and tasted great. The bottom dish is pot stickers or shui jiao.

Oooooh, yeeeeaaah.

Shredded pig ear, tofu, and tea egg.

The ACA was taking over Taiwan by force.

Map of southern Taiwan. We basically went everywhere on this map. However, by southern Taiwan, I mean the southern tip. This is *definitely* not the whole south.