Taiwan: Day 14

Day 14 was intended to be a morning at the beach swimming and then an afternoon on a whale watching tour boat before catching a train back to Beitou.  

Nothing happened quite as we planned.  We got to the beach with swim suits on to discover no one swims at the beach.  In fact, there are signs that say no swimming allowed, and for good reason too.  The waves break pretty much at the shore, and hence I imagine there's a pretty powerful under toe.

 So instead of swimming we cracked the beer and walked along the rocky beach shore.

The waves were crazy, breaking right at the shore and you could watch the water push and pull all the stones around.  You could hear the stones dancing.   

 Shannon taking pictures with her beer beside her.  

 About as far as we walked there were fishermen with their rods stuck in the stones waiting.  We never saw them catch a thing.

 We decided to take the easier route back along a bike trail, and watched this para-sailor riding the up drafts along the ridge.  He just kept going down the ridge losing altitude, would turn himself around and ride back to the point where he would regain all the altitude he lost.

 After spending a couple hours on the beach we tried to call a cab to get us back, but ended up in a van with a group of tourists from Hong Kong.  They were a really friendly bunch and it was a pretty fun ride back into the city.  We decided to find some lunch before catching the bus to the whale watching, but the only place around close enough was the place Shannon and Mike ate at the last time they were here in Hualien when Shannon had found a bug in her meal.  But we ate there again anyways and it was delicious and bug free.  Above you can see the lunch we shared.

We never did make it whale watching.  Apparently no one really understood us when we asked how to get to the whale watching... we think they might have confused whale watching with white water rafting, cause we did find a place that offered that, but we never found the whale watching bus.  So feeling a little disappointed we caught the train back to Beitou, and met Mike for dinner as a little western style grilled cheese bar.

Our sandwiches were all really good, but Mike's salad certainly took the prize for presentation.