Taiwan April 3 ++

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April 3
So today I headed out to hit a few beaches. First up was Fulobg beach. It want a great beach and it had a decent lil wave. There was a river mouth splitting the beach so the waves had some form to it and the wind was off shore. The water felt around 60ish though. I walked around here a bit then hopped back on the train and headed to Dasi beach. This was a tiny town not much there. The surf spot was about 1/2 k down the road in a lil cove area called honeymoon beach. The name is much nicer then what it actually is. No resorts or anything just a foundation from something. The beach itself was mostly black stone. That was the most interesting part it was black sand here and 20 min north on the train was yellowish orange sand.
My next stop was Waio beach. Again I walked around 1k to the surf spot. This was all black sand beach few large rocks scattered about. The waves here were by far the worst. Yet it had the most people out. Apparently surfing has recently taken off here no Kelly slaters yet though. Haha the crowd got bigger as I went south as the waves got worse. So. Yea ha.
Anyway from here on the map it had looked about half way to the next train stop so I decided to walk to the next one. Because the the girl at the info center back in Taipei said that one had a good beach as well. I managed to ask one guy where the train station was. He hesitated at first then said 10 min walk. I should have picked up on that hesitation. I walked maybe 10 mins and ran into some guys that spoke English and asked them. They said it's far but 10 mind as well. Haha ok I push on. Then 10 mins later I stopped to get a drink and asked them as well. He mined down the street on the right so I thought I was close. I walked a little further then went right but didn't see anything. I tried pointing to the Chinese characters to 2 old people one woman waived me off before she even looked then the guy did the same. I realized they must have either known Taiwanese n not Mandarin or were illiterate. I then asked 2 kids that had school uniforms on. Finally, I made it to the station at dusk. I hopped on the next train north bound towards Taipie but I had to change trains along the way which was interesting.
When i finally made it back i was hungry but i had finally cracked and bulked to getting some American comfort food. I went into pizza hut and got a pizza. You would think it would be easy to get a plain pizza but they put anything and everything on their pizzas it's discusting. They had to call one of the cooks that spoke English to help me. While I was waiting I saw a guy with a Nazareth sweatshirt on so I asked him about it. It's was Nazareth college in conn. I think. He had been out there 8 years teaching English. He said one day at work in San fran he shad he wanted to do something different so he came to teach here. Pretty crazy. We chatted a bit more then I headed back.

April 4
I had an early wake up to get down to Tarako gorge. I didn't realize that today was a Taiwanese holiday so I had to get an early train down n back. Which the early train back cut into my time down there so I decided to do a small day tour. I got to see the main sights. So it was ok. Tarako Gorge is a national park and it is a marble gorge. It was beautiful, really pretty rocks. There were lots of tunnels through the mts that we drove through then we got to walk through some at the end. I managed to get a quick hike in while everyone was relaxing and eating lunch. I think I was the only one to hike up the memorial tower shrine as well. Which had very nice views but I had to run down to meet the group as they were pulling around not sure if they were going to leave me there or not. We checked out a few more things before we headed back. On the way back we stopped at a marble shop were they taught us some ways to tell real and fake marble, jade and cats eye. It was pretty cool. We also stopped at some weird candy shop, everything was so gooey n chewy. It's weird. We finally stopped on some beach briefly where I got some weird sausage and a fried then grilled piece if corn on the cob. It was really good it had some chipotle n other spices on it.
I'm just on the train headed back now. Might go out with the guys tonight it's marks birthday Tuesday.

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