Scooters in Hualian

We returned home on Sunday afternoon from Hualian, the tourist destination of choice. It is next to Taroko Gorge on the east coast of Taiwan. We did a lot of wandering around the city and the girls bought a whole bunch of stuff from the markets. I am happy to say that the only thing I had to buy was a Taiwanese swimsuit while I was at the hot springs. It only cost about 190 NT which was a big relief. I'm not exactly sure how to proceed at this point in time with my adventures in Hualian. Perhaps I should just make this blog about scooters. But before I blog about scooters here are some pictures of where we were.

This is in the Taroko Gorge.

This is the view from one of the outlooks on our way down the coast. I would love to take credit for it but Whitney took the picture. It really was amazing though.

This is one of the pictures that I took while at the beach. I thought it was an awesome picture. We walked all of the way down to the beach and waded into the ocean. We waded a little bit too far into the ocean and ended up getting soaked. It was cold but not as cold as it would get in Utah.

For those of you unfamiliar with Taiwanese modes of transportation, the most common way of traveling around a city is either on a bus or on a scooter. A scooter is similar to the American motorcycle, but having never driven an American motorcycle, the comparison will have to stop there and you can just gaze at the photos displayed below. That said, we had some interesting experiences while on the scooter.

This is Sara's first time on the scooter. She was a little nervous but she made it to her destination and back safe and sound. I do enjoy the expression on her face though.

This is another picture of Sara talking to the policeman trying to get directions to the highway so we could go down to the beach.

Perhaps I should start out with the good experiences on the scooter. No one died and we got to see the ocean which was amazing. It was fun to be able to go where we wanted without having to rely on the buses or the trains.

Let me explain this picture. The helmet was giant but it did keep me warm and it would have kept me safe too had we got in an accident. I had to roll up my pants so that my feet would not get wet.

So now for the stories. Nothing exciting happened with the scooter that Joseph and I were on. We had a smooth ride and even if we had been dumped off the scooter, my giant helmet would have protected me from anything. Laura and Sara didn't make it out of the vacation without injury though. It really wasn't a big deal only that the roads were a little bit muddy from the constant rain and the scooter slid off the road into the dirt. Laura was not driving very fast and so the only injuries were some skinned knees and bruised pride. Mary and Jessica accidently hit a car while trying to get out of the city. They didn't have to go to jail though so we got to continue our trip down the coast. The last incident to mention was the flat tire on Emily Joy and Lish's scooter. We were two hours away at the hot springs and they had to call the scooter repair man to rescue them. They were reunited with us not long after the incident and we celebrated their safe return with good old Pizza Hut pizza.

This is prior to the mishap endured by Laura and Sara. As you can see they are still happy.