Waking up was quite...annoying. I don't say this because I was tired (my sleep was flawless), but because I had made a mistake when pitching the tent. You see, my tent has two [heavy] poles that hold up a kind of canopy for the opening. With that canopy, you can get a nice breeze in the tent, so it's not too hot. Seeing as the trip had been pretty rainy so far, I didn't want to leave the top open. My next option was to rig the opening in such a way that it stayed open.
This rigging turned out to be a bad idea, as I had attached the opening flap to the top of the tent, creating a sort of catch for water. As this filled, it came through the tent, soaking Yaling's and my feet as we slept (or, at least, as I slept, Yaling reportedly half-slept). This resulted in rather wet sleeping bags in the morning.
When I woke up, I discovered thus, apologized, and set off in search of...items. First on my list was a towel, so I could dry off the outside of our soaked tent. Second, I needed to find breakfast. Since it was 7:30am, my only towel option was a hand-towel for 80nt at OK Mart (I later found three
awesome hand-towels for 10nt each). Afterward, I stopped at a Mei-mei chain breakfast store and got some egg and vegetable sandwiches.
Food out of the way, we packed everything up and headed out to our next destination: a laundromat. We found one, put the sleeping bags in a dryer, and proceeded to further dry the tent with much better towels I found elsewhere.
With
that done, we bought bus tickets to Ren-ai (仁愛鄉) and stopped for lunch. After eating, and as we were waiting for the bus, we found that Yaling had misplaced her phone. She figured it must be at the laundromat; I ran there and there was no phone. Rather crazily, I called about thirty or forty times before some middle-aged lady picked up the phone. She said that her niece had given her the phone and that she would have to ask her niece about it! What!? Then she hung up! The nerve! I proceeded to call her numerous times until she, apparently, shut off the phone. Yaling it changed so that out-going calls could not be made, and then we went to Ren-ai.
There, it was much rainier than in Puli. That mattered little, though, as our purpose was to partake in the hot springs!
Seediq woman carving
Yaling holding up a teapot!
I guess I'm serving some tea.
Please, remember that this was not our original destination when I tell you this: We also did not have reservations for a place to stay, in Ren-ai. So, the first hour or so was spent finding a place to stay. After that was said and done, we had dinner, checked out some of the aboriginal structures built around the town, and then dove into the wonderfully sulfuric waters of Ren-ai! That was that...oh, wait...
I called Yaling's phone yet again, and eventually it came to be that a man had her phone, now. We made arrangements to pick it up the next day...then, went to sleep.
Upon waking, we had breakfast at the hotel, which was all right (but rather bland). We packed up our stuff, and then headed out to the bus, erm, to go hiking...
Before that, whilst we were walking up the hill to the main market area, there was a Mazda trying to
back down the hill. This wasn't going well, as the incline was very steep and he got himself stuck (he shouldn't have backed down in the first place). I tried to direct him on how to get out of it, but it seems his lack of experience with turning wheels in the proper sliding direction, coupled with anxiety to get his car moving, caused him to continue to be stuck. Eventually, a group of ten people congregated to try and help maneuver his car into a good position. Twice he was in a place when he could've backed down, and twice I made him aware, but the Taiwanese around me always talked him out of it. I left when a police officer came to manage the situation; that is just as well, seeing as the man obviously wouldn't take my directives (and I was the only one telling him something useful!).
Anyway, back to Yaling and I going up the mountain:
It turns out that she and I had very different ideas of where we were going: I thought we were trying to find the bus station, but she was taking me on a rainy hike into the mountains. I thought it was a little strange that to get out of Ren-ai you needed to hike 4km through the mountains, but I wasn't complaining!
Up and up we went, trudging through ankle-high waters and muddy roadsides, until we arrived at a roadside eatery, where I asked Yaling to find out where the bus station was. The man replied that there was none up here, and this is when we figured out that Yaling and I had miscommunicated our travel plans. That was just fine and well, as we got to see some "lovely" scenery (sadly, the rain and fog made it hard to see, at times):
Poor Yaling making her way up the mountain...
Pretty neat path
This time, we found a Seediq man.
Nantou is rather famous for its mountainscapes.
Love hiking!
We turned around, there, and headed back down. At the bottom, we found our way to the bus station and went back to Puli.
Upon arrival, we called the man and established a meeting point. We waited for him, and a
woman showed up in his place...OK, that's fine. We got the phone, thanked her, and went to buy a bus ticket to Taipei City. After, we got lunch at a wonderful little restaurant, where the owners were watching a really funny mahjong movie. This stop was another fateful one, as Yaling found out when we had made it halfway to Taipei. She asked, "Corey, do you have my jacket?" to which I replied, "Nope." She went to watching a movie and I located the restaurant on my phone. She should have her jacket back, soon.
That was our trip! It was an enjoyable, three-day adventure, and now I've finally seen more of the mountainous Nantou!
