Rafting

Around 15 of my colleagues and I went rafting together in Hualien last weekend. We rented a medium-size tourist coach and started our trip from Taipei. Everybody recommended that one of my colleagues, who is very familiar with traveling to be our tour guide this time. He knew that the shortest trail was going through the “雪山 Tunnel”, but big buses were not allowed to pass through the “雪山 Tunnel” yet. As there was no way other than the winding北宜and 蘇花 highways, he estimated the total time we had to spend in the tourist coach was eight hours. How boring the journey was. Some colleagues expressed that they wanted to go by plane; the others decided to kill time by eating food, reading books or watching video CDs on the bus.

We got on the bus at nine o’clock in the morning. When we arrived at the tourist hotel, it was almost eight o’clock at night. We hadn’t eaten dinner yet because we planned to barbecue there. Originally, we intended to go to a hot spring after barbecuing, but everybody was exhausted at ten o’clock and felt too lazy to take the bus again. Everybody went to sleep early and anticipated the next day, because we were going rafting then.

We arrived at the Hsokuluan River(秀姑巒溪) at eleven o’clock the next morning. Everyone had to change their clothes to a casual style there. It’s better to wear a long-sleeved shirt in order to prevent from being burnt from the sun. All of us were divided into two rafts, so there were seven to eight people in each raft. The first half of the rafting route on the Hsokuluan River was very smooth, and all of us in the same raft were excited to splash the colleagues in the other raft. The second half was rapid, so there was no time to attack each other. We had to hold on to the rope from the raft to prevent from falling into the river. Rafting is a very cool and fun exercise.

chihya