Hiking in Taiwan

Are we done with hiking?  Of course not! As long as we can, we will.

Quingtiangang National Park is only an hour bus ride away.  On the bus, we climbed upward and around until we were no longer in the city but could see it through the hazy sky far below.  What a nice escape! We set out to walk the circular grassland hike atop the mountain, but we decided to do the most challenging one first, the Juansi Waterfall hike.

In a familiar way, the hike to the waterfall was longer than expected but not very challenging.  The path was stony and precarious, especially for us 75+ year old ones, but it was downhill nearly the whole way.  The worrisome part was imagining our return trip back up the steep hills.

At the waterfall, in Stan’s backpack, we brought a picnic lunch of a nearly frozen Diet Coke (my go-to treat), ham & cheese sandwiches, carrot sticks, and cherry tomatoes.  We were ready to eat, and it was yum.  We had met so many people along the way.  Nearly everyone cheerfully greeted us with “ni hao” or “hello!”  Quite a few added, “Have a nice day, or bye-bye!”  How heartwarming!  Dang it, I need to learn to say in return, “Have a nice day” in Chinese. But that simple phrase contains about 14 strange syllables.  I will shoot for learning to say “good day, “ or in Chinese, it is ”zaihui,” which is pronounced something like:  “Zay-Whey.”  (again, very foreign sounding to me)

As we enjoyed our ham and cheese sandwiches on benches at Juansi Falls, we met a lady and her adult daughter.  With only our eyes and smiles, we became friends.  They reached out to us and gave us packaged candy.  Then they gave us homemade crocheted hearts on a string for our backpacks.  In turn, we gave them some of our candies and took photos together.  The hugs and smiles we shared were enough for a lifetime.  What an amazing place we have here on this earth!  And how encouraging it is to know that not just we but anyone can connect with people who live 5,000 miles from each other and still, in a magical moment, touch each other’s hearts. 

What a day!

This is God’s world.