Day 2 : 6th Oct 2006

This morning, our first destination was the 野柳 (Ye Liu) Stone park. The stones in this area were exposed to the weathering by the waves of the Pacific Ocean, and natural formations were created through the years. It was a facinating sight and the air is very refreshing. One of the famous rock structure "sculped" by nature over here is of course the "Queen's head" and the "Fairy's shoe"
The tour guide mentioned that it was estimated by the expertise that the neck of the queen will reach a collapsing point in around 10 years time. So lucky of us to have this rare opporunity to have an audience with the queen before she retires. As for the fairy's shoe, seems like someone left in a hurry.... did anyone hear the clock strike 12? I just couldn't resist to have this shot posted to show how big some of these rocks are.
After an hour in this area, we proceeded to the famous 九份 (Jiu Fen) street, where rows of shops/eateries on a mountain awaits us. Famous must-try dishes from this place includes their 鲁肉饭 (Minced meat rice), 芋泥汤圆 (Yam ball soup - dessert) and 鱼圆汤(Home made fish balls served in soup). We also find the 李毅风梨酥 (Li Yi Pineapple tarts) in this area particularly tasteful. Time is rather short when you are shopping around and very soon, we have to head for our next destination. We were supposed to take their train down to 花莲 (Hua Lian) but there seems to be some miscommunication with the train timings between the tour agency and the train station. It turns out our train was of a later timing and to kill time, our guide brought us to some other places, like a stop over point to view the pacific ocean crashing into the shoreline and a 3 stage waterfall, which were not included in our original itinery. Lucky! Soon it was time for our train ride and we have to leave this beautiful place. Our train ride to Hua Lian took us 2 hours. Our guide explained to us that it will take the vehicle 4 hours to reach our train station though. Our poor driver thus have to put on his Project-D gloves to catch up with us. He managed to reach our destination at about the same time. After dinner, it was check-in time. An interesting scene was that this day happens to be the 15th Aug (Lunar Date, also known as mooncake festival) and many families were out barbequing food. This seems to be their tradition, i.e. to BBQ out in the open to view the big round moon. We did try and walk the street, but most of the shops was closed, so we decide to hit the sack after a futile walk on an empty street. 晚安 (Goodnight) !