River rafting in Taiwan--not for the weak at heart

Yes, I rafted down that river. Yes, I had a near death experience. And yes, I obviously conquered the river (it may look tame, but a few river bends previous it was pretty vicious).

Saturday of our trip we woke up early to go river rafting: 6 Americans and one Taiwanese. We met up at the river rafting company's office to find ourselves with several hundred other Taiwanese natives. The difference between rafting in America and rafting in Taiwan is that everything is explained in Chinese, and that they don't have river rafting guides in each of the boats. For some strange reason we didn't expect it to be too bad, but man were we mistaken. We were put in a boat with another two Taiwanese, a Texan and a Frenchman. We happened to be the only people who spoke English, so they thought we should all be together. It was a blast. We started out being in front of all of the other rafts (there were at least 100) and we definitely prided ourselves about that fact. Everyone else seemed content on floating down the river, and engaging in seemingly high schoolish water fights. And everyone was bent on getting the Americans. Every time another raft got close to us, they tried to soak us. It never worked. Are you kidding me? No one's a match for a group of Americans (yes, I'm proud to be an American).

About two hours into the trip, and after two hours of very tame water, it was lunch time. They fed us rice boxes (which are amazing) and gave us time to mingle with the other participants (which we didn't). When it was time to continue on, they told us to link 4 rafts to a motor boat, so they could pull us through the rapids. As we tried to link our raft, we got lost and started floating down the river. No one came to our rescue so we braced ourselves for the worst. And I was incredibly proud of our group. We definitely conquered the rapids. It wasn't until we were half way through the rough part that a motor boat felt like they should hook us on to tow us through the rest. Bad idea. Really bad idea. As soon as we were hooked on they whipped us around into a rough rapid that tried to suck our raft in, and then yanked us out. The force flipped our raft over and we were caught in the currents. Gotta admit it was a pretty horrifying event. Some of us got trapped under the raft for a while, while others floated down the river, until some of the other rafts decided to give us a hand. I whacked my knee pretty badly on a couple of large rocks hidden just below the surface. By the time I got back into our raft, there were just 3 of the original 11. And we had 2 paddles. It would have been funny if it weren't so scary. By the end of the trip we ended up all getting back together minus a pair of eye glasses and a helmet that belonged to the Texan. All in all it was fabulous. I'd definitely go again.

After the rafting trip we had about 1 1/2 to get to Taitung where we needed to catch the last boat to Green Island. We thought there would be a bus stop at the end of the river rafting route, but boy were we wrong. We stood on a bridge and looked like hitch hikers--after a while, the thought actually crossed our minds. Fenny tried everything she could to find us a way to get to Taitung. She stopped a motorcyclist, old men with a flat-bed truck, and a tour bus. Finally we spotted a taxi driver who stopped and told us that he and his friend could take us to Taitung. He called his friend, and we waited....and waited....and waited.

What happened next was the most horrifying taxi ride I've ever been in my life. First of all the seat belts in the back seat were stuck underneath the seat, and we couldn't reach them with any effort. Our driver was insane. He sped at an incredibly high speed and passed cars when he shouldn't have. Seriously. Passed cars on our way up hills, over double yellow lines, and when it was obvious another car was coming our way. He got so close to another car once that left side mirror broke, and the glass went flying. It was seriously insane. But he got us to our boat--the Barf Barge--with time to spare.

More about the Barf Barge and Green Island later.

Laters!