The Allen's Online Blog

Today was my first Saturday not working since I've been in Taiwan. We were excited for the time off and for the time together. So, we decided to spend the day in the mountains. (The mountains of Hsinchu are supposedly some of the most beautiful in Taiwan.) We packed a picnic lunch and scooted off around 11 a.m. After driving a good 40 minutes longer than we expected, we finally arrived at a mountain spot filled with extravagant worship for the oven god. There were beautiful temples, a market place, dancers, musicians, and lots of Taoists pilgrims. We followed the road to its end, where there was a hiking "trail" for those who wished to continue to the peak. This trail was about six inches wide, and looked like it had not been hiked in a very long time, or at least not very often. Any other foreigner probably would have taken the hint and turned back, but not us. We accepted the challenge and charged into the woods full of excitement to reach the peak. After a few minutes, we wondered if we were really on a trail at all, but we hadn't seen anything else that could've been the trail, so we carried on. It wasn't long before we were scaling mud and stone walls and sliding down small cliffs to follow this "trail." After about two hours, any hint of a trail was gone, and we were lost. We tried to call our friends, who we were having dinner with later that evening, to tell them we were lost, and might be late, but the cell phone battery was dead. So, we were somewhere on the top of a mountain with no phone and no direction and nothing but sharp cliffs to follow. We decided to try and find our way back the way we had come, always a good idea, but having lost the trail, it was a bit difficult to know exactly where we had come from. There's no way to describe the peril we were in without making some sort of action film. We were literally holding on to the side of the mountain as we trekked along the edge of a cliff, wandering in the hopes of making it off the mountain before dark. There were several times were the trail would give way under our feet and we were only saved by grabbing onto some tree branch or other sturdy plant as we were plummeting off the edge. One time, there was a landslide under my feet, but I had already been holding onto a tree branch with both hands for support. What a frightening thing it must have been for Phillip to hear the land collapse beneath my feet and turn to see me literally swinging from a tree branch with nothing underneath me. There were several times when I thought Phillip was going to take the quick way down the mountain as well. It was a bit disconcerting at the time, but now I wish we would've taken more pictures... maybe even a brief film.
Eventually, we did find our way back to some sort of trail, but we weren't entirely sure where it would lead. It lead us to a man who lived in a cave. We're guessing he was Hakka, because he couldn't understand anything we said in Chinese (then again, it could've been our horrible accent). After some vivid attempts at communication, he threw all of his belongings into a bag and led us down the mountain. Apparently, it was so easy even a cave man could do it. ;)