Elizabeth – Page 3 – Elizabeth's Travel Site

Gorges and Cliffs

Taiwan is a mountainous island, formed several million years ago when the Eurasian tectonic plate and the Philippine Sea plate collided, forcing the plate edges upward out of the sea. It’s not big, only 395 kilometres north to south and 145 kilometres across, but has 268 mountains exceeding 3,000 metres in height.

We did a lot of walking today in the eastern mountainous area. First stop Taroko Gorge, where we hiked a trail that was not difficult in terms of elevation, but nonetheless slightly hairy, because the trail was cut into a cliff, whose ceiling was a little low for a tall North American. I had to watch my head in a few spots.

In Taroko Gorge. Note the walking trail cut into the cliff on the right.

River pool in the gorge (such clear blue water!)

<=== And here is a view looking down from the main road. That’s Geoff on the walking trail looking up at me, and the person in pink on the left is just emerging from the cliff-cut trail with the low ceiling.

Next stop Qingshui Cliff, a highly-Instagrammable beauty spot. This is the actual edge of the collided tectonic plates. The cliff continues below the water to a depth that is greater than its above-water height, and it increases in height by about 2 centimetres every year. Geology professors often take student groups there, as it is apparently very rare to find a place where such activity can be easily observed and measured.

Another interesting snippet about Taiwan: it has very little crime; for example, our guide tells us most lost wallets are quickly returned. We saw a surprising thing connected to this late last night, passing a closed-for-the-day shop with many beautiful floral arrangements outside. I felt sure that, had a Toronto shop left out comparable displays, they would all have mysteriously vanished before we could have seen them!

A final note: I may not yet be an influencer, but was interviewed on the street about language-learning by a young YouTuber. Well, I guess even Gwyneth Paltrow had to start somewhere! 😉

and ps, isn’t her toddler cute?

And now, on to Hualien…

Left Taipei early this morning on the train toward Hualien, a smaller city in the southeast, then took a trip into the surrounding country. Here’s a pic of a (spent) field of lotus, which are grown in wetlands for their seeds, with the central mountains behind.

We visited an Indigenous village to see traditional fish farming. It’s an interesting process; they use three layers of vegetation to raise three types of seafood. The bottom layer is bamboo tubes that will attract and shelter what they initially described to us, rather puzzlingly, as “fish without clothes”, which turned out to be eels, which do not have scales. The layer above that is twigs, which attract and shelter shrimps, and the top layer is leafy palms that shelter fish with scales, such as tilapia and carp.

I had no desire to try things out for myself, but luckily my lovely assistant Geoff stepped forward to don hip waders, and while the eels and shrimps eluded him, he did manage to net a small fish.

Next, a soup-making demonstration. It reminded me of the kids’ story Stone Soup, which some of you might remember from grade school, and here is why. They didn’t use a fire to heat the broth — rather, they put cold water into wooden dishes with vegetables, plus fish or other protein. Then heated rocks (serpentines) to about 700°F, and dropped the said rocks into the soup, which boiled instantly and continued to cook for some time. And it was pretty tasty!

Note the soup on the left is boiling hard, from freshly-heated rocks!

In the evening, back to the nearby night-market for a street-food dinner. More sanitized than the night market in Taipei — really more like an outdoor mall, but the food was again very tasty. And still a lively scene. Food vendors, funfair contests like ring toss, places to gamble at mahjong, street singers, and home remedies!

The large spiny fruit in the bottom pic here is durian. It is famous for being so stinky that the airlines won’t let people on board with it! No, we did not buy one 🥴

We’re on Taipei Time…

I feel like we lost a day somewhere, because of the 13-hour time difference, but with the dust now settling on our jetlag, I figure we’ve been in Taipei two full days. Day 1 was spent strolling, and trying to stay awake, then today we met up with our guide and started the official tour. There are 10 of us in total — 5 Australians, an American, an Englishman, and a Korean, with Geoff and me as the Canadian contingent.

We visited a night market to people-watch and have a street-food dinner. If you are not familiar with the concept, these are big open-air bazaars where you can buy a great variety of goods, food, and drink, and they operate from early evening until well into the wee hours of the morning. The food is somewhat eclectic; we shared some beef skewers, then fried sweet potato balls. I’m not a beer drinker, but Geoff drank something interesting: draft from a tap poured into a plastic sleeve, upon which they then snapped the top of a beer can!

Sitting later on a terrace by the street, we saw 3 garbage trucks approaching, with the lead truck playing a loud chiming melody exactly like an ice cream truck in Canada. We marvelled at the music as they pulled up in a row beside us, then apartment-dwellers from surrounding buildings came out to dispose of their garbage, recycling, and organics. And so our “garbage truck chimes puzzle” was solved!

Today we visited the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial. He’s a very controversial figure in Taiwan, but is quite revered in this impressive marble monument, with an honour guard 24/7. Apparently Feng Shui dictates that his statue should face east, but Chiang faces west so he can look toward China. Shallow though you may think me, the feature that most impressed me was the trompe l’oeil floor outside the post office at the back entrance. It is a TOTALLY flat floor that you could roll marbles across, but doesn’t it look 3-dimensional?

I’ll close off with a few random shots of Taipei from our subsequent walking tour.

Wasn’t that a PARTY!?!?!?!?

Honestly, it is hard to describe the actual Up Helly Aa celebration. You will need to come and experience it for yourselves!

We had some free time after the morning parade, and Geoff and I had a wander through the downtown, where I bought some Shetland wool and a Fair Isle hat. Then back to the hotel for a bit to rest up before the evening. Headed back to the town centre around 5 PM, and from then everything went wild.

We hadn’t quite understood this bit of it before actually being there, but about 1,000 marchers began to come down the hill and form up along the sides of the road. Each one was part of a squad, and they are called guizers (pronounced GUY-zer). The big stars of Up Helly Aa are the Jarl’s Squad, ie the Vikings we saw in the morning, but all 47 squads of guizers had a theme of some kind. Ones I can remember included: Where’s Waldo, Elvis Presley, Sidewalk Chewing Gum, Singing In The Rain, but the list goes on and on. They dress in theme, and later perform in theme. As they formed up along the road, the excitement in the crowd was running high and then suddenly a big firework went off with a bang above us, and at that signal the first few torches were lit in front of the Community Centre. (As an aside, if you check out the photo below, you will see on the left of the Community Centre the Town Offices, which were used as the police station in the TV show Shetland.)

From this point, the torches of the 1,000 or so guizers were lit, and they began a circuitous walking route around the area, with the Viking galley boat being pulled along behind them. It took about half an hour to do the parade through and pull the galley to its final destination in the centre of an open park, and what a spectacle — the line of flaming torches snaked for about a mile, the heat from the torches was like being beside a big bonfire, the guizers were roaring, and the crowds were cheering — and then one more big firework went off above us, and the guizers threw their 1,000 torches into the galley, which went up in an unbelievable roar of flames, fanned by the usual Shetland winds, with huge drifts of sparks making a red Milky Way across the sky.

Then back to the hotel for an hour or so to recover and change out of our many layers of windproof and weatherproof clothing, and off to an all-night party, although I have to confess we left at 1 AM. The party was also terrific, all the squads were taking turns coming through the 30 or so official parties and doing their performance at each. They ranged from unbelievably talented to slightly hokey, but always a wonderful and energetic mixture of singing and dancing, truly a “live performance”.

It was certainly an experience, and if you are looking for a slightly different Scottish holiday, this might be the one! And ps, Geoff DID make it to the BBC News, one of my cousins saw him on the telly last night! What a star… 🌟

The Morning Parade

The event that brought us here is Up Helly Aa, a Viking-themed fire festival celebrating the beginning of the end of the long dark winter nights. Shetland is actually closer to Norway than to mainland Scotland, and has many archaeological remnants and cultural aspects that are Norse. We are very far north, the same latitude as St. Petersburg, Russia, and Churchill, Manitoba, and they see only about six hours of daylight here at the darkest season.

Local teams plan and prepare for much of the year, and this morning’s parade was by Vikings in raven-wing helmets, with axes and shields, marching through the town of Lerwick. The day will be capped off tonight with the burning of a Viking ship (built each year for this specific purpose). The 1,000 or so participants are made up of many “squads”, with the lead squad or Jarl’s Squad wearing the Viking dress. Theirs was the parade we followed this morning. Here’s a link to a YouTube video, hope it works for you if you have any interest in seeing it:

https://www.shetland.org/videos/recent-videos/shetlands-fire-festival-season

Surprisingly, Geoff turned out to be a media darling. Perhaps because of his unusual hat, bought in Iceland a few years ago, he was interviewed on-camera by the BBC about his impressions of Shetland and the festival, and then about 10 minutes later he had a similar interview by Agence France-Presse!

The festivities continue this afternoon. We scored tickets for a music concert, then will attend the torchlight parade and boat burning, and — hoping we can stay awake for this — we got tickets for a party after the boat burning tonight 🔥 🔥 🔥

They weren’t joking about the wind…

We survived the 12-plus hour crossing from Aberdeen to Lerwick with no seasickness, but as anticipated it was rough. At one point, we were sliding up and down in our beds, alternately touching toes to the foot then heads to the top. It felt like being a character in a Roadrunner cartoon. But very thankful to have maintained our sea legs with no dizziness.

Spent the last day and a half touring and enjoying these windswept isles. It’s not terribly cold, but the wind is incredible, it would take the skin off your nose. They warn us not to walk “close to the edges” as we are always near the sea, and we can see why. People with small children keep a tight grip, as otherwise they can be blown onto the roads.

The scenery is beautiful, and some of it would be very familiar to you if you have watched the TV series Shetland. Visited a variety of scenic spots, from Clickimin Broch, a 2,000-year-old fort, to the [pretend] home of TV detective Jimmy Perez in Lerwick.

And to close things off, I don’t know how many of you do the daily Wordle, but yesterday I decided to start with a Shetland word, and then another Shetland word, and I got it in 3. How funny is this? It sums up our vacation in 5 letters! 😂

Across the sea…

The Shetland adventure begins! I myself had a really enjoyable week-plus in Scotland visiting with my cousins, then Geoff arrived Thursday for the next leg. We left Edinburgh this morning with our tour group, and have arrived in Aberdeen to catch the overnight ferry to Shetland for the Up Helly Aa festival on Tuesday. We are feeling quite lucky, as the weather forecast for tomorrow is not favourable, and tomorrow’s ferry has already been cancelled, but we seem to be good to go (touch wood) although we have been warned the crossing may be a wee bit rough.

Just before Aberdeen, we stopped at Dunnottar Castle to stretch our legs and, while I didn’t intend to share pre-Shetland Scottish photos, I decided to share this one. The location is amazing, hope you agree.

Hoping we reach Shetland tomorrow not too green around the gills — 🤞🏻– and will post a few pics as we go. No sign of Jimmy Perez or Tosh on the boat, although we are keeping our eyes peeled.

Ready to Leave…

And for our last official stop of the tour — how did 10 days go by so fast? — a game reserve at Bandia. It’s a very large park managed by the Senegalese government, containing local birds and animals for sure, but they have also brought in animals like zebras and giraffes that are not native to West Africa at all, but are animals tourists apparently want to see when travelling in Africa. They do very well here, they just are not native to the area. Couldn’t quite decide how I felt about that!

To wind up the blog for this trip, a couple of pictures of the happy tourists. Don’t we look relaxed ? The second pic includes our driver Waly on the left, and tour guide Abou on the right. We had a great trip with them, and would encourage anyone interested in going to Senegal to talk to us about this tour. But for now, off to pack for the homeward voyage. Thanks for following along as we have traveled — I have appreciated the comments!