The Swift Family Blog : July 16

Today we did probably my favorite hike in Taiwan. It was a big hassle to get to the hike and get back, but the hike itself was great. This hike was in Yangminshan, a National Park that is right in the boundaries of the city of Taipei. We had to take the subway and two buses to get to the hike which took about an hour and those buses were really crowded. Add on top that a few people in our group got motion sick going up the small mountain roads. When we got to the spot where we wanted to start the hike it was super cloudy and raining. We were pretty disappointed because the weather report for Taipei said it would be clear with a few sprinkles in the afternoon, but I guess the mountain makes its own weather. We went to the visitor center and waited for a bit, but after a while we decided the weather was too bad to do the hike and we would just have to go back. But then I think maybe we had some divine intervention. About 5 minutes before the bus was scheduled to come, we started heading toward the bus stop to go back home. While we were waiting there, the kids ran around in the rain a bit. As Ethan was off exploring he saw the smoke coming up from the volcano we wanted to see at the start of the hike. He ran and told us and asked if the other boys could go with him to check it out. They did, but the bus came while they were away. We hollered for them and they made it back while the bus was still there, but by the time others got on because we were waiting for them, the bus was too crowded for us to fit. So we had a 30 minute wait for the next bus. About 5 minutes into that wait things cleared up a lot and so we decided that we could do the hike after all. So we were really lucky that we missed that first bus and things turned out the way they did. The hike started off with a view of an active volcano opening. It was really cool to see the steam rising up out of the crater where the volcano had formerly exploded. The sulfur smell was really strong there and there were a few small puddles that were just boiling away. After that the hike started to go around the crater through the tall grasses up the mountain side. It was a pretty steep hike and it seems like in Taiwan rather than doing switchbacks, they like to just put in a bunch of stairs. Although it was steep the weather was perfect and the cloud cover kept us nice and cool. The view of the grassy hillsides going up was so beautiful. All the children did great just running up the trail. It took us about an hour to get to the top. There, the winds were crazy. There was a post at the top and while we tried to take our picture with it, it really felt like the winds were going to knock us off our feet. Fortunately, the top was kind of big and flat and so there was no worry that we were going to fall off the side of the mountain. The top also had a few boulders that allowed us to get protection from the wind and drizzle that was happening while we were up there. The kids had a blast up there. We were right in the middle of the clouds and it was incredible to see them come up and over us from one side of the mountain. We ate lunch there and rested a bit while the kids played around. A few times the view opened up and we could see above the cloud layer (the kind of view of the clouds you get from an airplane), which was really pretty. Then we started our hike down the other way. The first 15 minutes of the hike down were pretty cloudy and it was hard seeing more than 10 feet in front of us. But then it cleared up and we got some amazing views of the grassy mountain hillsides and of the whole city of Taipei. It took us about another hour to get all the way down the other side. At the stopping place there were some public hotsprings. For these hotsprings there were two options, a couple small outdoor pools where you could just soak your feet, or the indoor baths where you had to go nude. Since the genders were separate, most of us decide to go for the full experience and do the indoor ones (Julia took one step into the girls’ bath and decided she was just going to soak her feet and my sister decided to support her and stay out with her). For the boys, it was a room probably about 50 feet by 50 feet big. There was one main pool with stools all around it. Inside there were probably about 20 or so guys, all over the age of 60. We got in and took our clothes off and put them in lockers and the boys ran to hop in. All of the old men stood up though and tried to tell them to stop before they got in. It was in Chinese though so the boys had no idea what was going on. A few of the old men got out and showed us that we have to sit on the stools first and scoop up water from the bath and wash ourselves before hoping in. I was worried that they were going to be annoyed with us for not knowing how to do it, but I think they all thought it was funny watching me and the four little white boys (Ethan, Christian, Elliott, and their cousin James) figure it out. We sat in the pool for about 20 minutes and the old men were all so friendly. Rebecca and Agnes reported to me that they had a similar experience in the girls’ pool. It was all much older Taiwan women in there and they were more than willing to help them figure out the right order for getting clean to get in the pool. In fact, Rebecca said that in addition to having some of the women show them how to wash, some of the women actually started washing her and rubbing the soap on her body for her. Rebecca also had a funny story while they were in there. She had finished helping Agnes go to the bathroom and she couldn’t figure out how to flush the toilet. She saw a button and so she pushed it, but it turned out to be the emergency alarm. When the alarm started going off all of the old naked women started to panic thinking it was a really emergency and they scrambled to start to leave. Rebecca tried to tell them that she had just accidently pushed the button, but she couldn’t communicate it since she didn’t speak Chinese and they didn’t speak English. Finally, through hand motions and lots of pointing at things (remember this is while they were all naked) one of the ladies was able to figure out what happened and she turned the alarm off. So even though it was quite the adventure, Rebecca said she was really glad that she did the bath too. The bus ride home was long and we were all exhausted by the time we got back. I think the children just ate ramen noodles that night and went straight to bed.